


Euterpe And Her First Last And Always Vol 3: Turn Up The Heat

by HopelessWatersheep



Series: Euterpe And Her First Last And Always [3]
Category: Pink Floyd
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drama, Emotional Manipulation, Erotica, F/M, Fire, Heterosexual Sex, Infidelity, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Marijuana, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Peeping, Psychological Warfare, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Soap Opera, Stalking, Trauma, Voyeurism, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:15:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 49,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29298015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopelessWatersheep/pseuds/HopelessWatersheep
Summary: In 1974, the drama turns up for our beloved characters as they go about their lives...from Roger manipulating David into working with Syd professionally again to the grueling process of recording an album to follow up Pink Floyd's most commercial success to date, to a fateful encounter at the recording studio after Jane and Rick's wedding ... and then to a vacation in the German Black Forest that results in some unexpected encounters and a deadly, devastating fire...will all see a moment of peace?In 1978, David and Maisie begin to struggle with the strain that his touring and her work puts on their relationship, but swear to stick it out and spend their lives together, affirming their love for one another during a steamy getaway on an island off the coast of California. Meanwhile Roger goes into a tailspin after Cora walks out on him, and his fragile state leads him to kick one of Pink Floyd's founding members out of the band.In the present, Maisie barely escapes Roger's clutches at a reunion show in London, and the confrontation between David and Roger that results may ensure that Roger never sees Maisie, or plays with his old band, ever again.
Relationships: David Gilmour/Original Female Character(s), Orville Wilbur Richard "Rick" Wright/Original Female Character(s), Roger Waters/Original Female Character(s), Syd Barrett (Musician)/Original Female Character(s), Syd Barrett/Roger Waters
Series: Euterpe And Her First Last And Always [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1529393
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Rick - London, August 2007 - The Bloomsbury Hotel

**Author's Note:**

> This should also be in the summary:
> 
> Kim and her friend Ivy arrive to stay with David and Maisie in 2008 shortly after the holidays after Kim puts the prospect of an amicable divorce on the line. However, with vengeful, vindictive Ivy along, all may not be what it seems.

And so it is that we’ve come back to reunite for one more gig, and if you’d told me years ago that it took a jolly good old charity event to make it happen I mightn’t have been surprised. I have to confess to you that I wasn’t ever particularly sure that this would happen while the four of us were still alive: there’s that much bad blood between the three of us and Roger. There was never a right time to do the reunion tour, it was never in the cards for one reason or another...mostly because (I suspect, anyhow, as it’s always fallen on the two of them to decide, as Nick and I could often go one way or the other with things) of squabbles between Roger and David that I always found petty to begin with, although of course that could just be my own bias, viewing my struggles with Roger as more serious and less about creative differences and personality incompatibilities, and now that Maisie is back in the picture...that whole mess. I could say for myself, however, that collaborating with Roger was something I never thought I’d condescend to do again. When I asked him if we could take some time off of touring so I could devote my time to Rhiannon after being away from her for so many crucial years and leaving her alone with my mother … and he responded by firing me … I could’ve never even imagined the possibility of ever even looking at him since then. Today is certainly the first time we’ve spoken since Syd’s service, but before that I hadn’t spoken to Roger since the early 80s. 

So this is all very significant.

David and Roger, I feel the need to express, have struggles that go beyond their butting heads and thumping chests over a woman - as you likely already know, because I’m sure Roger has repeated it over and over... he managed to flush Maisie from his mind with alcohol or something that I’d think sounded bloody ridiculous, except it’s been proven to me over and over again in this hell we call life that nearly anything is possible, even forgetting about somebody one was obsessed with just by nearly killing oneself with drink. But yes, all that aside, I can’t even begin to unravel David’s issues with Roger and determine which were related to Maisie and which were not, but it must be stated that Roger Waters is such a putrefying carcass of a human being and so difficult to manage working with creatively as well as personally that his bandmates have repeatedly turned down opportunities to bring home lorries full of money just to avoid working with him. So, no, it isn’t all about Maisie, although at this point I think one can reasonably infer that it may be a bigger factor than it’s been in quite a number of years, and we’re likely to be allowed to enjoy some male signaling today. Mightn’t it be wonderful if they started throwing punches, or Maisie spit in Roger’s face, or something like that? One could only dream, yes?

How I wish my Jane were here to watch this unfold with me.

Anyhow...

As for me, not that you’ve made a habit of asking, I’ve spent the last 10 years living alone after breaking it off with my third wife Sandy, who I grew frustrated with and tired of after six months of marriage. I cut the cord immediately, gave her a nice sum of money and have never heard from her again. Nice woman, but she just didn’t have it. I’ve been in and out of relationships and marriages since the early 80s. Actresses, models, my housekeeper, an escort, a truly nice and normal woman that I nearly almost fell for, but couldn’t. Because try as I may to love each of the women I’ve been with as individuals, all I saw when I looked at any one of them at all was a pale imitation of my true love, no matter how different from her they were (as they all were, for no one could ever be anything like her). After going through it more times than I care to admit to you I’ve reached a point where I’ve unequivocally accepted that there will never be another love for me and taken to my life as a bachelor, although I suspect the years have embittered me. 

Since I lost Jane I haven’t been at all the same person. In fact, that’s more than an understatement. When Jane … pardon, when I talk about this sometimes I do tend to get teary-eyed. When Jane burnt up in front of me in that bleeding fire something snapped inside me. That fire that wouldn’t have ever happened if David could have possibly properly disposed of a cigarette, but I’m not blaming him anymore. I’ve moved on from that. 

Something shattered inside me when her blood curdling screams for me stopped...in that moment when I realised she was gone, and when David pulled me from the scene I ceased to be the person you first met all those years ago: a shy lad who thought a whole lot of honest things about people and never bothered to say them... and in that lad’s stead I became someone who cares so little about upsetting other people that when comfortable I may say whatever I think someone needs to hear, even if it might hurt their feelings. I will take half credit, actually, for the reunion between David and Maisie (although I advised him to try to be honest with Kim and allow her to find someone else, and he … big, dumb coward that he is … refused to do that, preferring instead to be dishonest, sneaky, and terrible and choose to just cheat on her rather than make any waves in his own life), but Syd deserves half the credit as well, basically telling Maisie to go hop right on top of that opportunity and ride it as soon as it came (didn’t we always joke that Syd was psychic?). So, I have certainly changed since we spoke last, as I’m sure you have. 

The gig is tomorrow evening… 6 p.m.: the sun will be gentle and the air balmy and comfortable, but with the humidity being so bad I doubt we’ll all be comfortable up there on stage. We’ve all arrived today at the grand old Bloomsbury Hotel in London, a posh, smart place with a rather intimidating wrought iron front gate with a fancy golden ‘B’ stuck into the center like some gold surrounded by lumps of coal. We all agreed to meet out front near the entrance to say our hellos and go over some small talk for a bit before wandering in our own directions. Better to meet in a public space, I say, than to put everyone in one room and hope no one ends up dead. I know for a fact that the three of us aren’t completely overjoyed to be doing this. I assume that Roger is also unhappy about it, but I haven’t seen him yet, and as I said I kept up my insistence upon never speaking to him, even when he begged David to give him my number. We barely even spoke at Syd’s service. I don’t think I said a word to him beyond hello, goodbye, and denying his offer to spend the evening together while Maisie and David fucked in that pathetic old chap’s hotel room...likely in the bed he slept in. For Christ’s sake.

As for the rest of the hotel courtyard, well, it’s very pretty, if not a bit claustrophobic. There’s no way six people will be able to safely gather on this stairway and make room for other patrons to pass through at the same time. Perhaps that’s for the best, however.

On each side of the stone steps and on every stair there’s a potted plant in the same old boring grey stone that the steps themselves are made out of. They’ve got them arranged in a pattern: one large pot, each with a small tree stuffed inside followed by three small pots, all the way down the steps to the bottom. Through the windows one can see the bright lights of the lobby hanging from the ceiling, and all the grand furniture sitting about as if anyone really spends any actual time in a hotel lobby to merit it being decorated so ornately. When one looked up they’d notice a long white awning that prevents the sun from blinding everyone who chooses to stand outside, and keeps out the rain on one of London’s infamous rainy days.

It’s a hot August day, and we’ve avoided the rain somehow (it wouldn’t really be summer in England without the rain, so if there’s a god of some kind it’s certainly smiling down upon us today). The humidity is rather terrible, so they better have some fans blowing on us on stage tomorrow, or we’re going to all be a lot more cross with one another and the entire affair than we would have otherwise been. The air smells like flowers, but it’s only masking the stink of London. Although it’s beautiful out as I’m waiting for everyone else to show up, it’s starting to feel to me like the day could be souring fast. Perhaps it’s only that I’ve no idea what to expect, but I can’t rid myself of the sense of foreboding I’ve got. It’s perhaps a little like the sense of a gathering storm that I felt in 1974 when we went on that holiday to the Black Forest.

Ah, here come David and Maisie now: the It Couple, or whatever. Walking arm in arm as if they are paying no mind that it’s quite possible someone could sneak by with a camera any time now and spill the secret they’re keeping from Kim, they come almost bursting through the hickory wood French doors. They’re all but absorbed in one another before they even deign to look at me, but both of them burst into smiles. It’s nice for some old friends to be happy to see you. 

I’m not quite sure when David started dressing almost exactly like Roger, but he only ever wears his black t-shirts and blue jeans now, so nothing about how he looks is at all interesting, especially considering the pudgy apron that’s hanging over his body. Yes, yes, eyes and lips, and good strong arms, but what a shame, really, how David’s aging (did you think I’d gloss over it? You thought better of me, didn’t you? Silly). Paunchy, pasty, and balding...very much a shadow of his former beefy, beautiful self, but his eyes are still a piercing, glacial blue that give off a mysterious but warm and friendly gleam when you stare into them. He should really get his weight under control, however. Makes me worry for him.

Maisie’s hair looks curlier than it did the last time I saw her, although not like it was when we were young. It was a bit more wavy and less curly a year ago at the service, so perhaps she’s stopped doing something to it, or started doing something else. You know, women and their hair. It looks beautiful, though; I bet a lot of women pay to have hair like it.. She’s got it carelessly flowing down her back and over her shoulders...a silver mane shimmering like new fallen snow in the sun. She’s got on a light black sweater that clings at the waist and fans out over the hips with a v-neck that is surprisingly daring considering the preppy little pincushion she was when I met her, and on the bottom a pair of bootcut jeans and some chunky heeled black boots. She’s taken to wearing these large sunglasses, I think, but they do look arresting on her. Her lips are painted a daring red, and she’s wearing a wide brimmed sun hat. Amazing how she can dress like it’s closer to autumn than it is and be comfortable. Must be warmer in Maine in the summer than it is here. She’s always had a particular scent of coconuts or something about her, and I can still smell it on her from over here. Age has been kind to her, as it has been to Kim, and David’s a lucky bloke on both ends, for as I said...age hasn’t been nearly as kind to him. Wonder if it ever bothers him. He never really cared about how he looked. He knew he was hot, though. David always knew he was hot, and don’t believe him if he ever tells you otherwise.

“Richard,” David says as he sticks his hand out to me for a handshake, but when I give him my own he pulls me into a tight hug, which I’m not particularly happy about. Seems a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it? I’m not the hugging kind; I begrudgingly accept and return it, patting his back before I pull away and smooth out my shirt.

“Dave,” I almost announce. “Good to see you again. Hey, Maisie,” I say, lifting my hand in a greeting. 

She smiles at me and comes in for a hug of her own, but I expect it from her. Americans, they fucking hug everybody. They’ll meet somebody once and hug and kiss them at the end of the evening, especially the warmer blooded ones. Jews and Italians, Irish, Poles, Blacks and Chicanos. Not common amongst the white Anglosaxon Protestants, for sure...just like us over here they’re a colder, more reserved people. It’s a bit weirder to hug her than it is to hug David, I must say, as before the service I hadn’t seen Maisie since 1980. Americans are just so familiar with one another in a way that I find jarring, but it’s rather charming sometimes.

“How are you, Rick? I felt bad we didn’t get to talk at Syd’s service. Stuff just happened so fast. Felt like a whirlwind,” she says with a laugh. 

“You did sort of just rush out,” I joke, “but I suspect it was warranted.” 

I try to play it off like a sarcastic joke with a disarming smile instead of the insult that it’s meant to be for the sake of the concert. I’m all but sure that it came off the way I planned for it to, but one can never be too certain. She doesn’t look offended, however, so I guess it all worked out. Didn’t miss the mark this time. Good. I’ve still got it. Can play off an insult as a knowing rib without a problem. I’ve been doing it for years and I don’t think anybody’s on to me yet. Amazing how trusting this whole lot are. Or stupid. One or the other.

With a shrug of a strong shoulder (I can see this woman lifting small amounts of weight a few times a week. She’s in very good shape.) and a knowing tilting up of one corner of her plump, bloody lips, Maisie finds it rather easy to shed the guilt and remorse that should surely accompany being on the other side of an affair with another woman’s husband, doesn’t she? (Sometimes it’s very difficult for me to feel sympathy for these people, really. I don’t know if you feel that way, but what a bunch of old nutters who don’t truly connect with anyone else but one another but won’t be honest about it. Jesus Christ, if they’d just all been in a giant relationship probably everyone would be happy, but the two that are still living are too fucking competitive and jealous to ever allow it to happen.) A woman with multiple children and grandchildren by the man she’s rolling around with in a pretty little beach getaway spot, even. Do you think she feels any shame at all? One must wonder. Not my business, though, is it? The mission was to get them back together, and Syd and I accomplished it. Now that the mission has been completed it’s no longer my problem. I’m only watching.

The three of us make some idle chatter about this, that, and the other before Nick and Amelia make their way out behind David and Maisie. Speaking of age, it’s been pretty damn cruel to Nick then, hasn’t it? He’s gotten fat just like David has, and he’s never had the nicest face, but good god, what a shame. I feel pity for him just speaking of it. Let’s move on to Amelia, then; it’s a much nicer mental image for me to paint for you, if I’m honest. Amelia’s made it to her 60s without gaining a fucking ounce; I’m not sure how, but she just has. She’s 45 kilos soaking wet just as she always was, but her hair’s a bit dried out these days from all the years she’s spent dying and processing it. Don’t get me wrong … Amelia is a knockout, and though I want to beat her to death with a tire iron, she looks fucking amazing for her age...her hair is just a bit fried, is all, and that’s fine. My nerves are fried, so who am I to judge? 

Amelia’s devotion to the colour red has not faltered for one moment since I met her. Maybe it’s a little less on the nose now, though, but the way the colour red rests against her tawny skin makes it a very wise choice for her. It makes everything about her, from her cacao locks to her olive green eyes, pop out. It’s also the colour of the fucking devil, and so it makes every bit of sense. Today she’s got on a red pencil skirt with a white button down short sleeve blouse tucked into it, and a pair of red high heels paired with flesh coloured tights. She looks rather like a flight attendant, I suppose, and it’s not that it’s all that unpleasant...just a bit odd, is all.

I think about 10 minutes have passed. Can’t have been much longer than that. We’re all having a grand old bloody time laughing, reconnecting, and enjoying one another’s company. Must say, I’m rather enjoying it. It’s been quite a while since I’ve felt close to other people.

We’ve gathered in a small, exclusive circle outside the hotel entrance...I’m facing the door alternating between talking, listening, and watching people come in and out, and next to me are Nick and David, each with their female companions on their arm. Those two, of course, are chattering on to one another about Cora and Judy’s wedding. David, Nick and I are bouncing some ideas back and forth for rehearsal tonight, and then we drift onto the topic of the show tomorrow, and on and on… conversation flowing the way it ought to. I start to really and truly ponder how I haven’t felt this at ease in years, and how amazing it is to be in the presence of all of my friends, and then it hits me like a ton of bricks that our lighthearted reunion may be tragically short-liv

Of course things here are still fun and lively. There’s someone else that hasn’t graced us with his deplorable presence, and come here to rain on every part of our parade. 

He’s 15 minutes late, that selfish old prick. Never was one to be on time for anything. 

And every second that he puts off his arrival is another second that I have to sit here with a terrible weight in my stomach, sick at the thought of him being within even glancing distance of me in my last years that I am meant to eke some sort of enjoyment out of.

And out of nowhere the skin on my back starts to crawl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand at frantic attention. There’s a rustling of pavement behind me; someone’s walking, and a jagged edged chill starts to writhe through my veins and slice them up. I can almost feel him breathing on me. I can almost hear him his forked tongue hissing.

David’s eyes dart behind and above my head, and his face twisted up all of a sudden like he had smelled something rotten. Now I know for certain this can’t be anyone other than Roger Waters arriving behind me. David attempts to force his face into a friendly smile, but the corners of his lips seem to be having a hell of a hard time raising themselves up at all. If his lips can’t lie, then his eyes sure as hell can’t: I can see the hatred starting to stew in David’s icy stare from over here, so I know Roger must see it for certain. I suspect that Maisie just briefly noticed that she’d caught Roger’s eye, and instead of deigning to fully lay eyes on him she’s chosen instead to tighten her grip on David’s arm and turn her attention back to Amelia as if he’d never approached. He gives her arm one last squeeze and then lets it drop...and he crosses his muscled arms across his broad chest, and I’m certain I see him puffing it out, even. He takes a second to turn the corner of one lip up into a curt, mocking smile, after which he turns his attention back to Nick, neglecting to acknowledge that Roger’s arrived, which I’m sure must drive Roger barking mad. 

I’m simply not going to be able to live with myself if I miss the look on his face right now, and if I don’t tell you about it. I turn my head nearly in a flash, and greet him with an almost too wide smile, pretending to be happy to see him...but I’m nothing short of overcome with disgust when my eyes fall upon his beautiful, wispy silver hair perfectly coiffed on top of his head and his jagged, chiseled features with those sea green eyes, and that trim, shredded body. How dare he look so fantastic at our age after everything he’s done to hurt other people around him? There is no justice in the world, is there? Roger seems to have grown more beautiful on the outside by the year, and one has to wonder, I suppose, whether in some sort of way he’s made a pact with Satan himself and started to trade any beauty that was left inside him for the outer beauty he never felt he had. Almost like everything inside him that was once perhaps redeemable is just sucked away and pumped into his skin and his hair and his muscles...

I take perhaps a sick joy in the smile that’s sliding down his face like mud as he faces what was most likely his worst fear about coming here: watching Maisie and David together. I didn’t think it would hit him this fast, but I’m watching it play out right in front of my eyes. I must say it’s well-deserved, both for it to happen to him and for me to be allowed to witness it.

“Well, hello then, you lot,” Roger squeezes out through bared teeth and a pulsing jaw as he zeroes in on David, but then he lets his eyes wander toward Maisie, and he tries desperately to stave off the sadness in his eyes. His gaze wanders over every inch of her, and I can clearly imagine his most fragile of hearts just disintegrating. His voice is like stone that’s starting to splinter and crack. It’s hard, but clearly forced, as I can hear shaking underneath like he may burst into tears at any moment. I try to imagine tears forming in his eyes...hell, maybe they are. It’s entirely possible that we may be so lucky as to see Roger Waters cry publicly and then be forced to wallow in his own public humiliation. How lovely would that be? 

We share a collective encouraging look between the five of us before we decide to verbally acknowledge him...sort of a ‘let’s get on with it then...we knew we’d have to. It doesn’t have to last forever, just say hello and make some small talk...send the ladies out on the town, and then take a smoke break before having to suffer through rehearsal.’ I wonder if Roger is aware of how much we all are simply tolerating him for the sake of the concert, or if he is so socially impaired that he can’t tell? But I truly think he can, and I think that is the very heart of the entirety of his vitriolic personality. His eyes make their way between each of us, searching for some kind of warmth or approval...they widen and then anything left of the smile he tried to give us has washed away, peeling back to reveal a layer of loneliness and bitterness that has been in there since I met him and does not appear to have ever gone away.

“Hello, Roger.” 

Nick is the first to offer conversation, as the rest of us except perhaps Amelia have very legitimate reasons to dislike Roger (even though Maisie isn’t aware of all of her own reasons...not yet, anyway...I always hope that somebody finally tells Maisie he stalked and peeped at her, and that I’m alive to witness it so I can see him disintegrate in public). He’s hurt and fucked each and every one of us over except for Nick and Amelia, and life hasn’t come for him nearly as much as I think it should have. But then again, perhaps Roger’s mind is a total minefield and he lives in hell every day of his life despite appearing beautiful and seeming confident and happy. I may never know, but I do hope one day to find out.

The rest of us halfheartedly follow with our own greetings, most of us with our eyes on one another or down at the floor. Whatever. We all knew we’d have to talk to him, not that we’d have to go out of our way to make him feel good. We’re being cordial, and that’s really all that matters today. After today no one will have to ever see Roger again if they choose not to (and you know most of us are going to do so). We’ll go back to ignoring his calls, refusing to speak about him to the media, blocking him from mentioning himself on our website, turning down requests for reunion tours, and only maintaining contact through Christmas cards. After we get out of this Roger can go back to being nothing but a bitter memory and a minor annoyance to us, but for now we have to play nice.

“How uh...are you all?” 

“We’re all well enough, Roger, thank you,” David murmurs. He turns toward the rest of us and continues. “There’s a back patio that’s more suitable for this kind of thing, if you’d like to go back there. Maisie and I explored out back there just a bit ago and the patio looks great. It would be a nice place to spend a few minutes talking.” 

The rest of us nod in agreement, especially because he puts great emphasis on ‘a few minutes’. The sooner we get this over with, the better.

“I think that would be very nice,” Roger chimes in.

His eyes focus clearly on Maisie, who’s gone back to chattering with Amelia while holding the forearm now slung over her shoulder with careless tenderness. They go wide with wonder and longing, roaming over her entire being, absorbing it. Transfixed by what he sees, possessed by her, floating back into her orbit. It’s hard to tell if anyone else has noticed it except for David, whose eyes have zeroed in on Roger the way Roger’s did on Maisie. He squeezes Maisie a little tighter to make it abundantly clear to Roger that he’s keeping an eye on him, but sometimes I’ve noticed David allowing Roger to be alone with Maisie and not even thinking about it, which always struck me as rather odd given how much I suspect David knows, but I never really considered David the brightest bulb in the box anyway. Phenomenally talented, sure. Kind, perhaps on his best day. Sensitive, caring, patient, hardly a wild emotion inside him...all true. But smart? No one ever really made that claim. 

Maisie’s either pretending to be unaffected by or unaware of Roger’s presence, or she’s actually unaffected or unaware of his presence. Either way, she’s not even bothering to look in his direction. She barely even said hello. Some things don’t ever really change. Roger is so, so drawn to Maisie, and she creates a madness within him that is unparalleled by most of his other madness (as he’s got quite a lot of different kinds of madness, the crazy tosser). She turns him into something not unlike a werewolf...a beast. A beast that’s gone out of control with something toxic and dangerous that he calls love. And yet Maisie, so unaware of Roger...so determined to pretend he doesn’t exist...by being so aloof to him she’s dangling herself in front of him. She will never stop being prey to Roger until she defends herself against him, as every time she says anything but no to him he will maintain hope that one day she will belong to him. 

Do you think that somewhere deep within her she knows, and she takes joy in being lusted after by Roger? I suspect she might. I suspect that she may hate him so much, but be very attracted to him on nothing but a carnal level, that she revels in being hunted by him...she revels in torturing him. And normally, perhaps I’d object to something like that, but since it’s Roger and I’d pay to see him suffer I’ll make an exception.


	2. Roger - Cambridge, April 1974 - Nick and Amelia's House - The Basement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roger feels sorry for himself as Rick and Jane share some big news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here is Volume 3!
> 
> I wanted to be able to give you guys 4 chapters but with how much I've got done I'm only gonna be able to do 3 so in the next few weeks I can give you 2 at a time without you catching up to me. 
> 
> If you thought Volume 2 maybe didn't have enough explosive drama then you will like this one a lot better. There is drama from top to bottom.
> 
> We've got two time jumps in this volume, one from 1974 to 1978, and then another from 2007 to 2008. I know that the last one kind of focused in really hard on one slot in time, but given that I'm trying to fit this into four volumes I do have to kind of speed it up a bit to make sure we get through everything we need to together. 
> 
> You'll notice I've finally given the past chapters their own months 😅 
> 
> Anyway, happy reading! Please leave lots of kudos and comments ❤️

_Well, hello there again. It’s been three years since we last spoke, hasn’t it?_

_I’m going to tell you right from the off that the past three years have not been all that much better than the ones that preceded them: not in my personal life, anyway...things with the band are going bloody fantastic. We’ve had quite a bit of commercial success lately, and I was counting on that, so I’m ecstatic that I’ve really made it happen. We are rolling in money and fame now after 21 days on the top spot on the Billboard music charts. We have tour dates lined up end to end, getting only a few months at home to work on some material for a new album, and for me to attempt to help Syd with the album he’s saying he wants to do, if that ever materialises into anything._

_If nothing else all this time touring will be great for my end of the relationship with Cora, though she may yet insist on coming along as she did last year for two cities in Europe (ran about Berlin with Maisie, shopping and spending far too much money...both of them). We are going to be so fucking busy that we’ve already planned (rather, the birds have planned) a five-day winter holiday in a cabin in the Black Forest. One cabin, five couples, ten people..Maisie and David loving and adoring each other in front of me while I’m stuck with Cora for five whole days...that whole problem. At least when Maisie comes on tour with us I can get away from the two of them for a while, but stuck in a cabin? That’ll be hell. I’m not looking forward to it._

_Still, if I could get a few moments alone with her perhaps I could change everything...perhaps I could give her one kiss that would alter the entire course of everything in my life. Perhaps._

_One would think that were they shooting to the top of the Billboard charts, earning so much money they didn’t know what to do with it all, living their dreams over and over again night after night...if they had all of that, they’d surely be able to sit back and enjoy it for one second without feeling strained and dissatisfied. One would think they’d celebrate getting exactly what they always wanted, except when it isn’t everything you’ve ever wanted... I want something far, far deeper than all this superficial and commercial success, and it is always dangling in front of me like water in my desert hell just out of reach for me to take it and hold it close to me forever. The success and the fame are addictive and intoxicating like alcohol, but they are nothing compared to how she makes me feel, and she is what I cannot get my hands on._

_It’s not all bad, by the way, not at all, my apologies if I made it sound that way. Success is rather nice, of course, but it all comes with a heavy price. I admit that I enjoy the adoration and the thrill of performing more than I certainly wish I did, and it feels right phenomenal to be recognised so clearly for my artistry, but the older I get the less it all seems to matter to me as much as I had hoped it would when I was younger and just getting into all of this. I keep hoping that playing shows will give me the high it gave me the first time. I keep us on the road so much that I know it bothers the other guys, but I can’t stop chasing that first high that I can’t ever find._

_The random, indiscriminate pussy I spent my 20s chasing means less to me now than it did then, and the longer I keep chasing it the less durable of a bandage it puts over my heartbreak and longing. I don’t even fuck my groupies all the time anymore, really. I sometimes just sit and get lost in the television, pissed out of my mind with whatever’s stashed in my liquor cabinet while they desperately try to guess what’s wrong and ‘fix’ me so I’ll fuck them like they wanted. That’s why they came, after all, but I won’t be a performing monkey when I’m not working. Why I keep letting them come back with me, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s so I don’t need to be so alone all the time…but the end result is always that I can’t seem to put her from my mind, and I can’t even look at those birds and feel anything but disgust and distaste, and I can’t get over the hump of wishing they were Maisie buzzing around me, fussing over me, offering me water, washing my hair..._

_The more successful we become as a band the more stressful everything becomes, the more fun goes out of it (not that it’s been very fun since Syd cracked, it’s just been more and more work and corporate bullshit), and the more I need to drink to get through one horrid moment of it all. So, sure, it’s not all bad, but really … it’s far more bad than it is good to be this successful, and don’t ever let any famous person lie to you about it. Being famous is horrid. I’m starting to worry I’ve grown addicted to it, however, and it sickens me to say so because the whole thing is … and I am unable to think of a different word … horrid. It’s the only time I ever feel I’m able to shrug off my sorrows and be someone else for an evening, and it’s seductive. Being away from Cora is also a point in its favour. Escaping from having to act my way through being a proper boyfriend (and all too often failing at it) is an entire reason in itself to keep the band on the road, but if I’m being honest - even though seeing Maisie with David tortures me and rips me apart at night being able to be near her without Cora here to keep an eye on me is just another ingredient in the elixir of this lifestyle that I’ve grown to depend on._

_The longer this goes on...the more times I watch her sleep soundly next to David in a van or on a plane...the more times I see her shyly covering her curves in her swimsuit up with her arms when she notices people looking at her, or flipping her head over and shaking out and scrunching her hair...the more times I see her command a conversation with Nick about smart things... the more determined I am than ever that she’s going to be mine. No matter what happens...somehow I’ll make her mine, and soon. It’s not far away. I’ve been holding on entirely too long...watching, waiting...I’ve been here too long to give up._

_I’ll certainly tell you more about that at another time, but for right now it seems Rick has something to say to everyone for a change. He’s sitting on the spew green sofa in Nick’s basement with his ghoulish girlfriend Jane sitting next to him, hands folded in her tiny little lap and her eyes connecting with us for perhaps a fleeting moment. Jane’s always in black...black blouses, black trousers, black skirts, black sweaters, dark rimmed glasses. She’s not the sort of lass that has any real variation in her wardrobe at all, it’s just rather black and fitted to her wiry, sort of waifish, maybe even boyish figure, but if I’m honest, it looks like she may be expanding a bit around the middle (I think that only works in her favour, however). All that flaming ginger hair flies all around her like flames whenever she walks. It usually hangs carelessly in her face, but today she’s clipped her hair back. In contrast to the usual haunted green eyes large and round as dinner plates that peer out at you from behind curtains of stray hair, today there’s perhaps a warmth in her eyes. Her usually pouted, expressionless mouth is upturned in one corner, and I can see some excitement dancing in those eyes. They’re usually so ghastly._

_I don’t think I’ve ever noticed Jane look so happy before. It suits her rather well._

_I sneak a glance out of the corner of my eye at Maisie, though, as I suppose I’m quickly growing disinterested with whatever Soft Old Rick over there has to say about whatever it is that’s going on with him that he’s got to tell us. Get on it with it, then, Rick, for Christ’s sake. What’s got his tongue, anyway?_

_Maisie’s put on a few, maybe. Kilos, not stones. She and David like to cook together a lot, you know, so they’ve been eating rather well, and oh, does it show in the best way. But with us out on the road I’ve noticed David packing on a few as well, and it looks damn good on him also, but don’t you ever mention it again. It’s hard to resist temptations on the road, and god, I get so jealous when I watch them share dessert. I’d kill to share dessert with her that way, but it’s always going to be David, isn’t it? Anyhow...her hair is a bit shorter perhaps. Not far too much shorter, but she got it trimmed, I think. Either way it looks luscious and perfect...everything about her is perfect to me._

_But she’s snuggled into David’s side and holding a cup of coffee right now instead of snuggled into my side. She holds the burning joint she’d been sucking on in front of his face and lets him take a hit off of it while she holds it in between his lips. She’s smiling brightly at him, and the light in his eyes bounces off of hers as they get lost in one another, as they so often do and always have. My heart is crumbling. My insides feel like something’s blown through them._

_With one full, sexy leg flung over the other, thighs and a big, round ass stuffed into a pair of blue jeans that flare at the bottom over her black chunky heeled boot she looks perfect to lie down and eat right now. She’s got a red sweater tucked into those blue jeans and fastened in with a white belt that shows off exactly the point at which her waist curves in the most. Her thighs look so thick, and so juicy...I just want to spread them and get at what’s in between. She’s tempting me. Teasing me. She’s doing it on purpose, isn’t she? Can’t she see that I am over here salivating and having a hell of a time looking where I’m supposed to be looking? I am so busy marveling at everything that she says and does that by the time I hear Rick say ‘getting married’ I have missed at least the first half of what he was saying...and she hasn’t looked in my direction once in all this time._

_“Pardon, Roger, have you decided to join us?,” David spits at me, having noticed that I’m looking his girlfriend over. He raises his beer bottle to me with that half-cocked smirk on his face that he gets when he’s fucking pretending to be taking the piss out of you for a laugh, when in reality he’s being a fucking bully._

_“Piss off, David,” I spit right back at him, and I make sure I turn my attention promptly on to Rick; it’s the decent thing to do, isn’t it? Especially since he’s apparently going to be married._

_Well, this is just bloody fucking wonderful, isn’t it? This is exactly what I needed. Can you tell how sarcastic I’m being?_

_This will get the other two all up in a tizzy about getting married. David and Maisie I’m sure will be married by the end of the year, and she’ll already be popping out little ones by the year after that, and I’ll have to suffer through all of that...all of those children who should be mine. And Cora? She’ll go mad with wedding fever, also, and that’s an issue I’m even less prepared to confront. I’ve only just met her parents two years ago, and what an uptight lot they are (not unlike my own Mum, I suppose), yet she hasn’t talked of marriage up till now. Thank god she’s out on an errand this afternoon, or I wouldn’t have had any time to prepare before she started to pester me about putting a ring on her finger._

_Anyhow, back to Rick…_

_He turns to face us, beaming, and then places his hand on top of Jane’s pallid, ghostly, spindly hand. She smiles at him, though it seems she’s trying to hide it. She must not like to smile in public (or so I’ve gathered), making it inherently clear to everyone why he made the choice he did, even though as clear as he tries to make it I still can’t understand._

_“So I’ve asked you all to sit down today so I could announce that I’ve asked Jane to marry me. I simply couldn’t wait anymore,” he muses as he turns to look at her with a beaming smile on his face._

_The other two ladies present, Maisie and Amelia, burst out in squeals and other happy sorts of noises, and then I notice David and Maisie share a knowing smile that boils my blood._

_Don’t tell me they’re thinking of getting married. I’d die if he married her. That would be the absolute, total end for me. There'd not be even one ember of hope left, and I would be stuck living with this heartbreak and desperate longing for the rest of time without any possibility of ever assuaging it with one kiss from her. I can’t even entertain the possibility. Look at the two of them sharing that smile as if to say ‘we’ll be next’. The entirety of the past four years has been hell, being confronted with being metaphorically tied to a stone being pecked by the two of them loving one another in front of me on a constant basis. If they get married I won’t be able to attend the wedding, that’s for sure._

_When the seemingly endless chain of women squawking and pawing at Jane’s previously covered hand to examine her ring, men shaking hands with Rick and unwanted hugs for Jane from the other two women finally does come to a halt and silence falls upon the room, Amelia is the first to speak._

_“So when’s the date, you lucky lot?,” she teases._

_“We’ve set the date for September 12,” Rick replies, gazing at Jane again and leaning over to give her a kiss. There’s one more eruption from Amelia and Maisie, both of them overcome with joy. There’s something about women and weddings that makes them turn into these emotional trainwrecks. That’s another reason I don’t want to marry Cora; I can’t deal with all of the bullshit that will inevitably come with having to throw a wedding for her._

_Hearing the date reminds me that I’ve already bowed to corporate pressure to start on a new album, and I’ve already got everyone working on some new tracks. I’ve booked studio time for that specific day. I probably should have told them all ahead of time, shouldn’t I? But alas, I didn’t. I just figured I’d tell them when it was and they’d know to be ready. We’ve been working our arses off at this new album, anyhow. I’ve written a fantastic song about Syd that I think will vault to the top of the charts, but we shall see. This level of success is unprecedented for us, so I don’t want to go making bets on it yet._

_“Actually, Rick…,” I pipe up, “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I’ve got the studio booked for us for that entire week. We’ve got to get the new album recorded.”_

_“You’ve got the studio booked on a Sunday, Roger?,” David asks with an eyebrow raised._

_The sourness and incredulity in his tone makes me feel like I’m being mocked. I don’t care at all for being mocked. In fact, it pisses me the fuck off. If he doesn’t cut it out with his tone we may end up outside. The tone compounded with the way he’s touching her...the way she’s looking at him with that dreamy, adoring look that should be only for me. All of that piled on top of itself makes the idea of going outside and kicking the shit out of him almost too tempting to resist, so he’d do well not to push me. Getting to that point won’t be difficult._

_Wouldn’t it be nice to watch me bash his beautiful head in? Rip all that luscious dirty blonde hair out and burn it? Stomp his teeth in? I think it’d be rather nice. And well deserved, for that matter._

_“Yeah, I do. I have us booked from Sunday to Saturday that week. We’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m sorry, Rick, I wish there was more I could do, but the dates are firm. The label is really putting a lot of pressure on me to …”_

_“You couldn’t have checked with us first, maybe? Like, does it ever occur to you that the rest of us have lives that we might like to live? This has been going on for years now, you making decisions about the band without asking any of us. Don’t you think you could have you know, perhaps let us in on the fact that we’ve got an entire week blocked out to devote to recording?”_

_David and I glare at one another, and I feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I feel some strings hooked in my back that are trying to pull me out of my chair and force me to charge him and knock him fucking backwards, but then I see Maisie, and she rolls her eyes at me...and all the anger goes out of me. Now I’m just devastated; it feels as if a spear has been chucked through my body, and that my guts may spill out all over the floor. I never want her to look at me that way again, and so I let it go for now._

_He raises another eyebrow at me, meeting my gaze with a disinterested, bored, unenthused grimace. I purse my lips at him and look down, fiddling with my ring. Closing my mouth. Picking my battles. One must pick their battles, mustn’t they?_

_While I’m looking down the room gets somehow quieter. I could hear a pin drop. What could be causing this weird silence? Was it really that awful, the exchange between David and myself? So awful that now no one wants to speak? Perhaps it was. I don’t think I’m always aware of my own tone of voice, and it’s not as if David was taking any care to speak with any sort of politeness himself._

_But no, I realise when I finally raise my head to check it out. The room has gone quiet because the Ghoul has opened her mouth to speak. I’m not sure this has ever happened before._

_“Roger, would you mind maybe leavin’ the mornin’ open, then? It would be proper generous of you. We could have the wedding in the morning, then, and then after the recording time is over we could have a small party amongst the lot of us? That way everyone gets what they want,” she offers._

_That tiny, delicate Irish brogue flows out of her like a freshwater spring, and having only heard her speak one other time as I was spewing my guts out next to a barn, I am both spooked by and unsurprised by the way that her voice so matches her entire being: it’s small, weak, flinching and struggling. She can barely get a sentence out in a tone above a whisper._

_“That sounds like a great idea, darling,” Rick replies, placing a hand on the small of her back as his eyes narrow on me. I’m starting to wonder if Rick hates me. We used to be mates. “Roger, is that something you could do for us?”_

_I bounce my eyes between the six of them, and they’re all looking at me expectantly. What other choice do I have other than to say yes? Am I going to tell them they can’t be married? Well, perhaps I’d like to. Perhaps I’d like to put a stop to the whole goddamn thing before it puts ideas in the women’s heads. Perhaps I’d like to keep everyone apart until I’m allowed to marry the one that I love._

_Look at her sitting over there. She’s smiling at Jane...reaching over from her seat next to the sofa and placing a supportive hand on her shoulder. Maisie has never been friends with Jane, but one word about a wedding and all of a sudden they’re best buddies._

_If she marries David because of this I think I’ll have no choice but to take my own life. The suffering would be unbearable, and I don’t think I’m willing to live through it. The only choice I’d have would be to break things off with Cora immediately and run to Maisie and tell her everything, but it’s doubtful that would work. In the past few years we’ve only really spoken at length once or twice. She goes out of her way to pretend that I don’t exist, but she is all I can see…_


	3. Roger - London, August 2007 - Roger's Hotel Room/Outside the Concert Venue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roger devises a plan to get Maisie alone. Will she fall for it?

Dear god, I barely slept last night. Every few minutes, or so it seemed, I would awake drenched in a cold sweat, panting and gasping for breath while horrible pains radiated through my digestive tract. For one thing, it was terribly obvious how unhappy every single blasted one of them was to see me. They tried so hard to hide it, to make things seem normal and low-key, but I saw right through it. The five of them all shared this knowing, exasperated look when I made my presence known to them. Nick, Rick and Amelia can fuck off; I want nothing to do with either of them, and David … well David can fuck off, too. In fact, I often wish rather desperately that he would; it would make this all so much easier.

I’ve been wracking my brain since I woke up this morning trying to figure out how I’m gonna get her to come talk to me on her own, and how I’m gonna get David to agree to it. I have to talk to her because I can’t put myself through this anymore. It’s time to tell her how I feel before it’s too late. It’s beyond time for her to know that I’ve been here all along...that I’ve been making myself sick over her for about half of my life, and that I’ve loved her far more than David could ever hope to. 

The problem is, of course, that I’ve got to manage to find a way to get Maisie to come up here alone. David watches me like a hawk whenever he’s with Maisie and I’m around like he’s sizing me up. Warning me not to get too close to what’s his or he’ll take my head off, but I’ll get her here alone somehow. 

I just want to be alone with her. Even for a few minutes to be alone with her I’d give anything of myself. But I can't do that if I can't figure out a reason to bring her up here after the show.

Speaking of which, I've got my final rehearsal in an hour. I should probably stop sitting on my ass fighting the urge to get drunk like I have to do every god damned time anything ever happens, or when I have a thought or feeling I won't abide, or have a bad day, or say something stupid, or...it doesn't stop. The list of reasons why I drink grows longer every year, it seems. To think I was able to stop for awhile only to end up right back where I was.

It all broke when Syd called, if you remember. Everything came bubbling up to the surface in a matter of minutes, and I suffered a major mental breakdown. I was paralysed in my bed or stuck in my recliner for too many days from the time he called me until the time I had to attend the memorial service. Everything, even mundane, everyday things, became too difficult to bear, and I lied there in bed frozen by all of the feelings of love and longing that I never thought I’d feel again. The days I spent after that fateful phone call agonising and longing for her were exhausting, depressing and far too many. Since that moment my heart has been on fire even though for so many years it was frozen and shut off. I dreamed endlessly of what she might look like, who she might be, what kind of a family she had...I fought off every urge to fly to England, walk to Syd’s house from the Cambridge train station, and stare into their windows watching every move she made until I got my fix of her...which may be impossible. The memorial service came, of course, and she was more beautiful than I ever dreamed she’d be in her late 50s. She was full figured, but firm...her ass was still remarkably round, her hips and legs generous...thick and built. Her hair, still cascading down her back and hanging right over her beautiful, bountiful ass … but it shone and shimmered like moonlight on a clear evening. Her obsessive skin care resulted in nothing but fine lines around her eyes and mouth, and I felt blown away...blown straight through the walls...when I looked upon her for the first time in all those years. She was everything I ever wanted, still, after so many years. And since then I am cursed, I am sick. I am sick over her. I dream of her almost every night, and when I don’t dream of her, I don’t dream at all. 

After the service I remembered even more emotions I thought I’d blocked out...more different events, times I tried to show her how much I love her but it never caught on... and I felt frozen with despair. It was absolute bloody fucking hell, even worse than when Syd first called. Anna tried over and over again to get me to come to bed with her, for sex or otherwise, and I couldn't move to give her an ounce of affection because I felt to give it to anyone but Maisie was a lie, a lie I could not tell: a lie I was sick of telling to so many women. Anna tried tirelessly to get me to talk to her: please tell me what's wrong, baby. I want to be there for you. 

And how wonderful that sounded, and how wonderful it would be if I could have let her do it, but what was I supposed to tell her? Oh, you know that memorial service I went to last year by myself? Well he was the only man I've ever loved, and ran into the only… and I'm sorry to have to tell you this now… only woman I've ever truly loved, and I grieve for him all the time, and I forgot her and now I'm grieving for both of them. Now I can't forget either of them, and I am in despair that I haven't been in since the mid 80s. And I feel very bad that I've got you, and you actually love me, and I'm tearing myself apart over a woman who never did and never could, because you know how I promised I wouldn’t screw you over like I did all the others? I'm about to do it to you, probably. In fact, since I've just about done it to everyone else, Anna, I'm bound to do it to you eventually, so let's just pull the plug and get the fuck on with it so you can be free of all my hatred and my toxicity and let yourself grow as a person instead of being as under my boot as you always are. I will only ever be happy if I can take the boots off, and I have never taken them off around anyone else. It isn't you. I thought I loved you. I certainly felt very warm to you, and I certainly do care about you and the amazing and intelligent woman that you are...but I love no one the way that I love Syd and Maisie. No one. Everyone's stabbed me in the fucking back. And I don't truly respect anyone, do I, or have you not noticed how I asked you to give up your career to move to the US to be with me? So go find a man worthy of all that love you have to give, and I'll be fucking here in this apartment that's always been too big for the both of us and so dreadfully not worth my money: losing myself in the memories of the only love I've ever wanted: the love with two people.

Something tells me that wouldn't have gone over well, right? If I had told Anna I couldn't stop thinking about another woman I hadn't seen in years, the first one to ever cause a stir in my heart. She wouldn't have been happy with that. What woman would be? I'm sure there are some very secure women out there who might not be bothered, but I'm surely not married to one of those. Anna is a sweet woman, very nice, and good in bed, very smart. It's not her fault I can't commit to anyone. I can pretend that I'm losing interest only because of Maisie, but you know me well enough by now. That's a part of it, but I lose interest in literally every woman I marry or shack up with. 

But I don't know, I suppose. This time it's different. 

She was so stunning when I saw her next to David yesterday morning when I arrived at our hotel...with that broad brimmed sun hat and big Italian sunglasses and blood red lips, her hair a shining, lengthy comet of silver. Her clothes clinging to her full and Rubenesque figure that’s always been what I secretly wanted. (Remember Terri in Boston?) Maisie’s clothes always cling to her waist the way they should. They always show off her sexy round ass, too. I love every plump, soft inch of her. I had a furious wank last night thinking of her sexy body on top of mine, and her pouty lips around my cock sucking me until I was drained of all my cum. It was the most satisfying masturbation session I’ve given myself in years. 

What a truly lovely surprise to see Maisie and David together, really. Can you tell I’m being sarcastic? I regret promising Syd I’d give them time together more and more every day, but I was so shocked by Syd’s mentioning of her name that I agreed to everything he said without thinking. I should never have agreed to this. The two of them could barely keep their hands off of one another when I walked up to them to say hello, and then when I caught David’s eye he immediately grabbed on to her hand, and that’s when she turned to look at me. She didn’t smile; she simply raised one hand in greeting and then left to talk to Nick and Amelia when David and I started talking. She barely even looked at me, and I was left, mouth agape, pretending to listen to David prattle on about something while staring off into the distance to take in every bloody inch of her. It’s funny how he barely noticed, if he noticed at all, that I wasn’t listening to a word he said, and that my eyes weren’t on him for a second.

None of us can truly give a fuck about anyone but each other. Except I don't truly give a fuck about David, or Nick, or Rick, or any of their wives or my own wife and all my friends...the people I use to keep myself entertained, those friends. I don't give a fuck about them, either. I only give a fuck about Syd, and about Maisie; David only gives a fuck about Maisie, Nick, and Rick, and Maisie only gives a fuck about David, Syd, and Nick. Common denominator here? No one gives a fuck about me, but I’m used to it, as they never really did, and perhaps it’s my own fault anyway.

She got her curls back since I saw her last autumn, by the way, and thank god for it. I can’t believe she’d ever take a flat iron to all that glorious hair and ruin it that way. I could barely talk to her in that moment before she walked off. Reminded me of the old days: hanging back, listening, watching in awe. I think this time it was a little more obvious. When we go to the back patio that the two of them went on and on about, David and I hugged (sort of, as much as can be expected), but I stood in front of her with my mouth open like some kind of dope. She stared at me, her eyes seemed like they were scrutinizing me before she raised her hand to wave and walked away. She was judging. She sees me as nothing but shit on her shoe, and I find it intoxicating.

But, my god, I was nervous. I'm even more nervous sitting here trying to figure out what excuse I'm going to use to get her up here on her own.

That's it. Syd. I'll say something about Syd. But what, exactly? I don't really have anything to say. I don't know. I'll figure out something. And what do I even really want her here for? Like what is it that I actually want? 

Eh, I'm an idiot pretending I don't know what I want from her, and you're an idiot if you believed it for even a second. Of course I know what I want to bring her here for. It may surprise you, but it's not just sex (not that I'd turn down the opportunity...for fuck's sake I'm likely to try anyway). I'd really just like to be in the same room with her, I suppose, and ideally tell her how I feel. Is that as stupid as it seems in my head? I don't have any real reason for her to be here... I just want her here. I want her to be near me. I want her to listen as I whisper in her ear about every feeling...everything that lingers in my heart. I want her heart to flutter and for her to melt in my embrace, allow me to hold her close to me and accept that she’s always belonged to me.

I've gone down to the stage, hoping maybe Maisie and David will be there early, and what do you know? There they are. They’re sitting off to the side of the stage on a blanket looking at a book together, likely something she’s reading since David doesn’t read at all, that’s for sure. The wind carries a lock of curly hair gently for a moment as the sunlight gleams off of its silver surface, and I feel myself melting into a puddle of nerves and hurt feelings. Her shapely legs are outstretched, her heels sitting in a pile next to her and she lounges while David has an arm slung lazily over her shoulder. He’s leaning over her: protective, unwilling to share. Completely unwilling to share. I wouldn’t really complain if I had to send her back to him as long as I had the chance to be with her, but down the line it would eat at me, and I’d fight like hell to make her my own. I’m starting to become intoxicated by jealousy already just watching them from over here. 

Look at them together. I hate everything about it. They're so perfect together it annoys the piss out of me. It always did. David gets everything I want. 

"Hello, lovebirds." 

They look up from the book they were looking at together, and stare up at me like they're trying to figure out what I expect of them. Not a fun way to be greeted. But she's so cold … at least she's looking at me now, I mean really looking at me. When we met before I could already tell that she was disinterested as soon as she waved and then her eyes glazed over before she walked away. This time her gaze seems to be set on me expectantly, waiting for me to say something. I could stand here silently for 10 whole minutes just so she’d look at me the entire time.

"Hi, Roger. What brings you here?" 

Ugh. David. If only he would just evaporate and Maisie and I could go on living as if he didn’t exist. If only I could just go back in time with what I know now and treat her right from the first day instead of catapulting her into the arms of two other guys I had to deal with day to day for years. I’d never have brought her around at all; I’d have just kept her home so she could go through life just as she was when I first invited her to stay . In the end what happened to her with Syd is my fault, and if I could stop that I could also stop David, and keep her by my side for the rest of my life as she should have been.

I wish I had run into her on her own instead. She's so beautiful sitting there in the sun with that black sun hat on and that white blouse with the Peter Pan collar and those dark black jeans. I wonder if she knows that when I look at her I think she’s just so breathtaking, and that it's what I've always thought. From that very first day...those big beautiful brown eyes. I can't believe I ever forgot. Can't see the eyes now behind those big black dramatic sunglasses, though. That's a shame. I can see those stunning painted red lips, though. Fuck, I hate that he's the one who will be kissing them later. It should be me lying next to her in our hotel room, reaching for her warm body, and kissing her, but once again... David has everything I want.

"Maisie, I just...uh…" 

Don't lose your train of thought. Really, Roger? You're so good with women. You could talk your way into anybody's pants, and you have. Why are you so nervous, you bleeding idiot? But you know why I'm nervous: I am utterly terrified that she'll shoot me down, and I won't get my chance to show her all this love I have to give her...all this love that I cannot escape from or put from my mind for even a second. If today doesn’t go right I may not ever get another chance. I’ve got to make this a grand affair: a ceremonious gesture. The kind of thing that will make her open those big brown eyes and that world weary heart up to what has always been there. Something that will make her realise that I can give her a kind of love she can get from no other man. Whatever it is she got from Syd, or gets from David...it is completely unlike what I can give her, and I know what she wants...and it is something I am more than prepared to give. It’s all a matter of making her understand what it is she truly wants.

She takes off her sunglasses and stares at me, wide eyed and pensive. There they are, those eyes: the eyes of a scared, innocent young lady in a park … only now, as they land upon me...the eyes of a woman who has very little patience and even less interest. It’s the realisation that there’s not even a bit of warmth in her eyes when I look into them that hits me like a tonne of bricks and almost makes me lose my nerve, but I’m resolute in this. I have to tell her; it cannot wait any longer. 

She shrugs, waiting for me to finish my sentence, and looks at me like I've got three heads. I want to die.

"Yes?" 

David creeps his arm protectively around her shoulders, and then he sits up a bit straighter and puffs his chest out just a bit. I hate that. What a prick. I'm not going to hurt her. For fuck's sake what I did to her in 1968 wasn't even that bad. I wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t cheat on me! She went to take care of Syd, who locked her in a fucking closet for almost a week, but she won't even give me the time of day. It's all backwards.

"I'd like to talk to you after the show for awhile. It's about … uh … it’s about Syd." 

I’m hopeful that my stumbling over that sentence hasn’t given me away.

Maisie looks over at David, suspicion written in her eyes as clear as anything, and I watch him shrug and read his lips saying quietly enough that I can’t hear ‘it’s up to you’. She shrugs, too, and then she rolls her eyes. I can see the expression on her face says ‘why not?’, but she doesn’t seem particularly interested. Seems like she might just be humouring me, but meanwhile I’m hoping to be able to pour my heart out to her. It feels like a cruel, painful and slow death. Jesus Christ, I did you both a favour last year. You could be a bit nicer, you two. In fact, I don't care if David's nicer, but I really want her to be. 

"Okay. Where?" 

God, I wish I could carry her off and never bring her back, and take her home to love for the rest of our days. I’d be like a prince on a horse, or something, scooping her up and never letting her go. But what would I be rescuing her from? She's happy with David and with the rest of her life. She doesn't need me, or even want me for that matter. It would probably play out more like a kidnapping, but we’d have a happy ending if I just got a chance.

"My room? Don't worry, David. I'm a happily married man." 

I hope he can feel the venom in my words. Looks like he can, because he kisses Maisie softly on the cheek and gets up to excuse himself to go off and do whatever. I've found he does that a lot with me, and so do the other two. My fault, I guess. It isn't my fault they sucked without me and David had outsourced all his lyric writing to others who just wrote shitty lyrics, though, but perhaps it is my fault that I actually said it. I said they were third rate, and I meant it. It's the truth. So he can go get fucked, and so can they. 

Maisie sighs and stands up across from me. I want to grab her, pull her into me, and kiss her so deeply she'll have never been kissed that way, by anyone. She just looks so good, all in black like that. Morticia Addams, or Stevie Nicks, even. I can feel my nerve slipping away from me like life from a fish trapped out of water...choking, gasping... as I stare into her eyes when I realise they are ice cold to me. I don't shrivel in the presence of any woman. It's kind of what I'm about. But this one...it's different. It's always been different.

"Yeah, fine. Don't be an asshole, Roger. It's unnecessary. Let's just get through this show with no problems, okay?" 

Yes, sure, whatever you say...just fucking kiss me. Now. Here, in front of everyone that's milling around. Just grab me and kiss me with so much passion it's like you're a geyser about to burst and you convince yourself that you've always wanted me a fraction as much as I've always wanted you. And then come home with me… we'll run away together somewhere far away from everyone and everything, and I'll find all the words to tell you how much I love you. We won't have to tell David or anyone where we are. We can be together and be happy the way we should have been...I'll do anything for you. Anything. As long as we can run away together, away from everything and everyone that might try to break us apart I'll do anything to make you happy. And now, before all that, I'll do anything to make you stop hating me. I'll do anything to make you love me. For fuck's sake, I'd slit my own fucking throat if it meant for a second you'd look at me the way you look at David.

Still too good for you, Roger. She's still too god damned good for you.


	4. David - Cambridge, April 1974 - David And Maisie's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW!
> 
> Maisie and David enjoy some morning fun after breakfast when they're interrupted by an unwanted guest with a ridiculous request.

_Well, hello again!_

_What a beautiful four years it’s been since we spoke last._

_Getting rich and famous...that’s been a fucking ride. I’m not surprised we’ve gotten where we have, but it still feels rather surreal to be here. All of a sudden we’re quite the talk amongst everyone we know and everyone we don’t who listen to music, and it’s strange, and really sort of imposing. I like it well enough, though. It’s nice to be recognised, but I’m not sure of all this touring. We’ll see how it goes. It’s making my headaches bloody fucking awful, that’s for sure. Maisie’s started carrying these oils with us that she rubs on my temples and my neck after the gigs are over, and it’s starting to happen more often. I’ll be glad to get a good break from it for a few months to write the new material and get a reprieve from these awful headaches._

_Maisie and I are of course, deliriously happy together, even if sometimes we’re unhappy with the touring life (that is to say, we’re quite often tired of it, and we party to deal with it more often than not). We’re so happy, in fact, that we’ve lost track of time. We’ve celebrated our anniversaries... December 8...but we’ve been so busy and so lost in each other that the idea of marriage just never crossed our minds. She doesn’t seem to ever want to talk about it, but I think about it so much. I think it’s beyond time that I asked her. I’m not quite sure what she’s waiting for, but I’d propose right now if she wouldn’t smile and nod her way through the question. Maybe she’s afraid. Maybe it’s because all she’s ever known of marriage is coldness and distance, and she’s afraid she and I will end up like that. Who knows? I enjoy things the way they are, and if she doesn’t want to get married right now I’m not gonna worry about it. We don’t really need it, anyway, do we? We’re happier without it, perhaps._

_Between our relationship, the recording, the rehearsing, the performing, the touring...time’s gone quite fast, and that’s putting it lightly. Sometimes I feel like we’re on a merry-go-round that just won’t stop, but I can’t complain at all. Or rather, I shouldn’t complain at all, but I’d like to. The Beatles didn’t have to tour to make money and be famous, why should we have to? I’d be more than happy to be home with her and write and play and record music from Cambridge, but Roger is addicted to this touring (that no one else really wants to do, by the way). Anyhow, that’s for another time._

_Even with all the chaos, Maisie and I still find a way to have our meals together in the morning and the evening. Even if it means we have to take breakfast at 1 PM after a rehearsal or recording, or have dinner at 1 AM after a show, we have vowed to eat our meals together. We still cook when we can, but being on the road...sometimes you gotta settle for whatever you can find...there was this time we were driving through some weird Midwestern town...perhaps we were on our way to Milwaukee. Might have been some bullshit little hick town somewhere. We stopped at a fill station and ‘food mart’ there, and all they had left to eat that evening were cold fucking hot dogs._

_This morning we’re lucky. We’re home for a few months so the guys and I can focus on writing material for the new album, and then it’s back on the road again in the autumn. But luckily for us, being here means making and eating meals together in our new home we bought together, so we’ve taken advantage of it this morning like we will every morning for the next few months before we’ve got to head out again._

_Our new home is a beautiful white Georgian style home with two fireplaces, a master bedroom and two spare bedrooms (one that I’ve commuted into a studio, and the other that Maisie’s commuted into a library and reading nook). It’s got a parlour, an eat-in kitchen with a separate dining room, three bathrooms and a basement storage space. The floors are hardwood and we’ve accented them with some Persian rugs in the sitting room and dining room, and Maisie’s got another one in her library. Outside one can see the two bay windows belonging to the dining room and parlour, and they could marvel at the way the trim of the bay windows look like the trim on a castle tower, and they jut out just a bit beyond the second floor windows. Along the stone walkway there’s a black wrought iron gate, and it all leads toward a pale blue set of French doors. There’s a courtyard in front on one side of the walkway, and we’ve got a small table and a few chairs out there...we take our breakfast out there on nice mornings, or perhaps our dinner on nice evenings, or both. It’s sitting opposite a small, plain garden that’s just got some bushes and a maple tree that sits in front of the parlour bay window, but ivy creeps up the side and over the second story deck on the side of the house. A second story deck that is accessible from the master bedroom, and when we saw that we looked at one another. That’s when we knew it was home. We’ve moved some furniture out there on that second story deck, two wicker chairs and a mattress with some pillows and blankets so we can cuddle and perhaps have a short fuck when it’s warm enough to sit outside. We smoke our grass out there most nights, and though I’m sure it all disturbs the neighbours...well, they’re from Cambridge, so they don’t complain or alert the authorities at all. They probably just talk about it over dinner, cursing us and our evil rockstar ways._

_This morning we’re in the kitchen, and having just finished our breakfast are sitting contently at our dark wooden monarch dining table we are basking in the quiet and letting our stomachs settle. It’s the best time to steal a glance at her before she starts to get too aware of the things she doesn’t like about how she looks and changes them. God, she’s still perfect, but in such a different way. The carefree, relaxed woman I’m sitting next to right now isn’t the same shy, quiet little bookworm I met, and even though I loved her then I couldn’t be happier about loving her now. She’s settled into herself a bit more. Hipped up her style, learned to keep up her head, and opened up a lot more. I love who she’s becoming._

_And that’s neglecting to mention that she looks just as perfect to me as she did when we met, even if she insists like hell that she’s gained weight, and personally I couldn’t care less, but I didn’t notice it if she did. We’re both still in pyjamas, me in a t-shirt and some plaid pyjama pants, and Maisie in a lilac purple one piece sleeper with a white collar and a white lace tie at the neck. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail with the red satin hair ribbon I bought her a few years ago on Christmas, sprawling down her neck and her upper back, careless. A few flyaways stick out...her hair’s a little fuzzy just like it always is when she wakes up before she’s sprayed it down, but I love that look. I love the way she looks when she’s just woken up, probably because right after that is when she pulls me on top of her and wraps her thighs around me, and oh...yeah. Back to what we were doing...god, look at her legs._

_She places a hand on her tummy, rubs it, and laughs, obviously happy about how full she is, but still worried about her weight (as usual). This morning we made some pancakes British style (which means ‘crepes’ for all you people outside Britain), some eggs, some bacon, and we’ve topped the pancakes with some syrup and whipped cream. I laughed at her when she ate more than she thought she should because I don’t think she needs to worry about her diet so much...I would love her body no matter what she looked like, just like I know she would for me._

_The sun spilling in through the back window makes our entire kitchen look cheery, inviting and warm...and it is actually such. There’s so much love in this room right now that it could cure the most bitter heart, perhaps even Roger’s, but let’s be honest … he’d never be invited to receive it._

_“Such a big eater, oh no,” I tease as I reach over and place my hand on top of hers._

_Her eyes shine as they gaze into mine, her smile brimming with love, and maybe desire. I see the gleam in her eyes that I saw this morning when we made love. We made a mess of our newly laundered sheets, bunching them and twisting them up as we enjoyed one another’s bodies thoroughly, but when I look at her now I’m feeling pretty fucking horny again. I realise I never ate her pussy this morning. She was so eager for my cock that I didn’t get a moment to focus on her._

_“I gotta clean the table,” she muses after a satisfied yawn._

_“I’ll take care of it. You just sit tight,” I whisper in her ear as I stand up and gather some plates in my hands, and I lay a kiss on her earlobe._

_“You don’t have to do that,” she protests, “I am perfectly capable.”_

_“I know you are, but I want you to sit here in anticipation of what’s coming when I’m done,” I whisper, this time nibbling on her earlobe a bit, hopefully sending a tingle through her body and making the hairs on her neck stand up._

_On my way over to the sink she turns around and flashes another smile at me, light and love dancing in her eyes. I wash every single dish, taking my time on purpose to keep her sitting and wondering what exactly I’m going to do to her when I’m finished. I look over at her from over the kitchen island and I notice her fiddling with her fingers. In a minute or so she’s about to get the ride of her life._

_I dry my hands, fold up the towel, place it back on the rack and make my way toward the dining kitchen table. She shivers when I run my fingers through her hair from behind, pull it away from her neck, and let my lips travel from the base to the nape of her neck._

_“What are you doing?,” she moans, and she starts to giggle and pretend to squirm away, but I_

_“I’m about to eat second breakfast,” I growl in her ear. I take her breasts in my hands and massage her nipples between two fingers as I squeeze and enjoy them. The heat of her skin is penetrating the thin soft material of her pyjamas, and I’m suddenly overtaken by the idea that she’s hot, she doesn’t need the pyjamas anyway. I can just get rid of that purple thing right now and lie her down and enjoy._

_“Yeah?,” she moans with desperation as I untie her collar and unsnap the small silver buttons on the back of her pyjamas, and I ease them off of her shoulders._

_She rises to her feet and lets me bend down and glide my lips over the hot, smooth skin of her shoulder and the prominence of her collar and shoulder bones. I roll her sleeper down over her arms, yank her arms out, and then guide it down over her generous, ridiculously strong thighs (she could choke me out with them if she wanted to, I’m halfway sure, but you wouldn’t know it looking at her). I make sure my fingertips drift over her thighs as I let the sleeper drop down to the kitchen floor in a pathetic little lilac purple heap, and then she kicks them away, and she’s bare, careless...the way I like her best._

_“Yeah, in fact, I’m going to have it right on this table,” I whisper with a halfway menacing chuckle as I ease her down onto the dining room table and spread her milky white thighs. She adjust herself and I kiss over her breasts, down the soft pad of her stomach, through the valley between her hip bones, and finally I reach her thighs._

_“David…”_

_She moans out my name with a long, mewling ‘aaaahhhh’ that tips up toward the end...wild, free, exhilarated, and I glide my lips along the creamy, perfect skin of her inner thigh. Her hips start to wiggle and jerk, and the table shakes as I finally make my way toward her pussy and move my lips in between her fucking perfect, juicy lips. She’s banging her hand on the table now as I let my tongue flicker over her, she’s having some spasms, or something...jerking about like a lunatic._

_And then we both freeze, because the doorbell rings._

_Who the fuck could be coming round this time of day? I stand up from crouching in front of her, help her up and help her scamper upstairs to our bedroom. Once she’s safely away I take a deep breath, smooth out my hair and my clothes, and walk toward the door._

_I open it, and there he is: the Serpentine One himself, the big, lanky, awkward, weird little fucker._

_Roger, in his long sleeved black t-shirt and skinny cut denim trousers, hands in his pockets, head down...cinnamon brown hair hanging in his face and hiding his piercing gaze that always lies behind his eyes, no matter who it is or why._

_This disgusts me. I deal with this slimy little bastard for most of my life, and he has the nerve to show up at my house while I’m trying to make my girlfriend cum? One of the main reasons I love to come home from touring is to get some time off from Roger, but here he is showing up to ruin at least a portion of my day for god knows what. Perhaps I could be working a little harder on my stuff for the new album, but it is what it is. I’m getting it done._

_“Yeah, Roger?,” I ask, sounding exasperated with him on purpose. I want him to know exactly how unhappy I am that he’s come round here at all._

_I think he gets the picture; he looks clearly taken aback. That clueless look he tries so hard to pull off...the ‘who me?’, like he doesn’t have any idea about what kind of a person he is. You sort of halfway believe it until you’ve spent enough time with him to know that Roger is really and truly aware of what he is, but he chooses to continue to act this way, which in my view is infinitely worse._

_“Could I come in? I’ve got to talk to you about something.”_

_I pause, and I look from one side to the other, weighing my options. It’s probably better to let him in, could be about the band. But still...I really would prefer that he went away and stayed away until it was time to actually work together, so I’m thinking about just sending him away._

_“Fine, come in,” I groan as I move out of his way and let him slide in between myself and the wall._

_He stands, useless and unsure, in the stone floor entrance hall and leans against one of the wooden pillars that peek into the dining room where I had just been enjoying Maisie’s pussy before he showed up to ruin it._

_Roger’s metallic green eyes dart toward the back of the room where the stairs lead down toward the dining room and the entrance, and they lock onto who I know must be lurking back there, stealing all of his interest and fascination. His entire body goes limp at the sight of her, I notice as I turn toward the stairs and notice her myself...looking absolutely scrumptious in a floor length denim skirt that hugs her curves, and it’s got ruffles on the bottom. She’s wearing a v-neck draped peasant blouse tunic with a jade green border that’s cinched at the waist with an elastic band, drawing immediate attention to the curve of her waist, and I know he’s noticing it...because I am, and also because I can see it boiling inside him just from taking a glance into his eyes._

_He trembles and withers in her presence, lost in staring at her as her eyes lock onto me and ignore his entire existence, which makes me smile. I smirk in his direction, and he catches my eye, and all of the desperate blood that was boiling inside him freezes as his brows furrow and his lips purse, channeling all their hatred and misery at me. But then as soon as I look back at her he allows himself to follow suit, and I have to stifle a laugh as he leans forward and waves as he stands slack jawed in front of her._

_When she finally deigns to take notice of him she looks at him like he’s a cockroach slithering around on the floor, and she wouldn’t be wrong if she were trying to. He smiles at her, seemingly in spite of swearing to himself that he wouldn’t, only for a second before clearing his throat._

_“H-hi, Maisie,” he mumbles, and then he turns abruptly back to me when she doesn’t immediately meet his eyes, desperate to appear unhurt._

_“Hi,” she nearly snaps at him before turning her gaze back at me, and when I sneak a glance at Roger I watch him crumple into himself. “I’m going to go up and read for a bit, so you boys have fun,” she informs us in a flat, unenthused voice before sprinting up the stairs. As much as I wish she’d stayed, it’s not a mystery at all to me why she’s done it, and I can’t really argue with that. After all, if I could run away from Roger, I’d probably do it too._

_“What is it, mate?,” I spit at him after she’s safely moved upstairs._

_His eyes are fixed on the stairway like he’s hunting her, waiting for her to appear down the stairs again and perhaps hoping that if she does she’ll treat him more warmly this time. After a moment, he looks back at me and I notice a smirk twist up on his long, sullen horse face. He’s up to something. I don’t know what it is, but he’s plotting something for me, and maybe for Maisie. Sometimes I feel as if Roger puts me in a position to make me miserable on purpose._

_“I’ve been working with Syd on his new album.”_

_“Thought Syd was done with music. The Madcap Laughs gave him another breakdown while he was making it, you said. He cracked again.”_

_“Yeah, had to go back in the bin and everything,” Roger mutters. “But he’s at it again, says his Mum made him stop taking his pills and all he wants to do is create. Says he’s got a ton of songs rolling around up in that spacey old head of his.”_

_The very thought of Syd unmedicated again wandering around and sitting in front of our house for hours makes my bloody skin crawl. We’ve gone four years without seeing even a glimpse of Syd. Syd hasn’t dared come near any of us...Roger made it clear to him that the band nor Maisie ever wanted to see him again, although Roger’s kept up a sort of long distance friendship with Syd - phone calls, letter writing (even though they live 15 minutes from one another) mostly - and so we’ve only heard anything about him secondhand...and even then, it’s often spoken in hushed tones around the women, and in passing. We heard about the first album, the one he’d been told not to make by his doctors. Roger did that one with him, and he later described it as being ‘a fucking chaotic inferno’. I suppose that he had stopped taking his medications by that point in 1971 per his mother’s advice, or insistence, perhaps, and doing that album really drove him mad again. He got locked back up by his sister, and he’s been out for a few years now. We’ve really heard nothing since then, and we’re all happier for it._

_Unfortunately Roger confided in me that given the opportunity, Syd still goes on about Maisie endlessly, and so although she’s heard nothing of him and is under the impression that he’s long forgotten about her...I know better. I know better, and I have to live with it, but she’ll never know._

_The last time he went unmedicated was when he locked her in that blasted closet, and then came round here and sat on a rock in front of our house. Thank god if he went there today there’d be someone else living there. He’s no idea where she is. That’s for the best._

_Anyhow, back to Roger, and whatever the fuck he wants ..._

_“I’ve been trying to work with him on this new album, Dave, but it’s fucking impossible. It’s driving me absolutely mad. He’s impossible. A-And I don’t have the patience to correct everything he’s doing and not blow up at him, nor anywhere near the musical prowess to correct everything he’s done wrong, nor the production and mixing experience to try to turn the toxic sludge he’s spouting into music.”_

_“Sorry to hear that then, mate,” I say carelessly as I pick up one of the guitars I’ve got standing in the corner of the dining room: a nice, shiny, new Fender guitar with a sunburst finish. A gift._

_I lift a leg up onto the chair next to Roger, rest the guitar against my thigh, grab a pick and start noodling around on it. As long as he’s got me captive here I might as well try to find some way to derive enjoyment out of it._

_“Well, that’s why I came, actually,” he starts._

_Instinctively, my eyes fixate from my guitar onto him, and I notice a cruel, sadistic gleam in his eyes. It’s one I’ve seen before; it’s almost like he’s taking some sort of joy out of whatever he’s come here to say. One corner of his lips twist up into a smirk, but as quickly as I noticed the smirk he’s slipped the mask back on, and he’s all of a sudden appearing very pleading and apologetic._

_Fucking hell. Tell me he isn’t going to do this. Oh, fuck, yes, he’s going to do this._

_“I have been so impressed with everything you’ve done with our mixing and production, and you’re a bloody brilliant musician, always have been, that’s why I picked you...I was wondering if perhaps you’d help him. He’s got most of the lyrics written and the music composed. He’s got all the bits done, but he’s having a hell of a time turning them into a whole. His brain is all fragmented, that’s what the doctors have said.”_

_“Are...are you fucking pissing me, Roger?,” I challenge him, freezing in place and then taking care to place my guitar back in its stand before I beat him to a bloody fucking pulp with it. I turn around to face him, and I can feel all the veins in my face pulsing so hard they may pop when I look into his horrid, steely cold face._

_He thinks I’m fucking stupid, doesn’t he? I know exactly what he’s doing. A ‘bloody brilliant musician’...this from the bloke who takes fucking shots at the way I play my guitar every chance he gets, and spends entire recording sessions and rehearsals bullying me and the other two guys about how to do things that he can’t even do?_

_“No, I’m not. Please, Dave.” I can feel my body starting to shake with rage, and he stretches his arms out in front of him to attempt to calm me. “Look, mate, I know you’ve got going on, what with trying to work on the album...we’ve all got a lot going on. I’ve asked Nick and Rick to help as well, and they said they’d hang around and make sure everything stayed… you know, peaceful…Syd is my dear friend, and I really and truly do want to see this second album be finished so that perhaps he’ll feel fulfilled and stop trying to make more music. Please...do it as a favour to me?”_

_“A favour? A favour to you?,” I spit with venom in my voice, venom that’s dripping with incredulity. “What do I owe you a favour for?”_

_And the mask slips down off of him,and I see the smirk. There’s no doubt about it this time. The real Roger has come out to play._

_“Inviting you into the band in the first place? Nobody knew you from nothing before I came along and asked you to join up, and now you’re famous all over the world, you’re rolling in cash, and you bought yourself a beautiful, big house to live in with your...with your…” He stops, and the words struggle to roll off of his tongue, probably because it hurts him so deeply to have to say them, “...your girlfriend.”_

_“As if you’re the sole reason all of that happened then, yeah? As if each one of us didn’t all put all of ourselves into making this entire fucking thing happen? All down to you, isn’t it, Roger? I can’t believe you’d ever think to ask me to do something like this after … after everything that’s gone on. You know Syd, he fucking hates me. I’m the one who took his girl away, remember? And I’m the person you think to ask? Are you fucking shitting me?”_

_“I’ve not just asked you. Rick and Nick have agreed to have a presence there, as well.”_

_“So...so, you’re just...this guy is YOUR friend, Roger! He’s your friend, and not ours, and he’s fucked up all of our lives in one way or another. We’ve all broken contact with him except for you, and you’ve asked us all to work on his album? And they...they fucking agreed to it?”_

_“Yes, they did. Not right away, of course.”  
There’s another smirk. _

_“I’ll fucking do this for you, Roger, but only because Rick and Nick have already agreed, and I won’t let them do it alone. Because I’m not a fucking selfish, cruel prick like you are, you sod. Go home.”_

_“It starts next week, and won’t take more than two weeks. I’ll call you with details. Thanks, David,” he sneers as he turns his head and slams the door behind him on the way out._

_I don’t think I’ll tell Maisie until tomorrow morning at breakfast. I don’t want to ruin the rest of her day. Can’t believe this tosser talked me into this. He knew to come to me last. He knew if I saw the other two going through it I’d feel obligated to join in. He knew it, and he took advantage of that._

_He makes me sick._


	5. Maisie - London, August 2007 - The Bloomsbury Hotel - Roger's Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW!
> 
> CW: Non-con, minor violence
> 
> Maisie and Roger engage in a power struggle that leaves both of them confused and hurt.

This ‘talking’ thing that Roger’s going on about? This is a thing that he has always done to David. This is the thing where his mind will drift obsessively over whatever thing he’s stuck on at that moment, and he’ll insist that he needs to dredge it up with you and go over it endlessly until he’s satisfied. If I didn’t ask what it was he wanted to talk about I might have never been able to guess. Roger and I have six months of history, really, all things considered, and I spent a lot of time in my youth ignoring him. We certainly don’t have anything to discuss...I’ve been making it a point to ignore him now that we’re here in London, too. David was already unhappy enough about having to see him, and I didn’t want to make it worse. 

This Live Eight concert reunion was a great idea, though, and I really am glad that David wanted to do it even though he didn’t want to see Roger. We’ve had a lot of fun: me, David, Nick, Amelia, and Rick...and it’s been a great time getting the gang back together somewhere that isn’t a funeral. David and I have had such a great time going away together, too... getting away from the house in Maine for awhile and seeing new places while we’re here (although David always insists there’s nothing in London he hasn’t seen...we managed to find one or two things). The music, of course, was spectacular, but we all knew deep down that it would be. All of them were absolutely on fire, even Roger, even though he was pissing David off when he was lip syncing all his lines. I think otherwise the whole thing went off without a hitch. 

It was crazy, though, the way they did all their setup and rehearsals without saying a word to each other. Amelia says that when it’s just the three they’re all really chatty, but now with Roger there no one says anything. It’s eerie. Really speaks to what kind of person this guy is, I guess.

And so we’re here in Roger’s room.

It looks basically like ours...black walls, white ceiling, wall length mirror facing the bed (David and I have been really, really enjoying that)...a double door closet with enough room for two people to hang their clothes, two white living chairs with strange black flowers printed on them facing one another, a black standing lamp with a shallow tapered drum shade, and a nice king size bed with a white bedspread, white bed sheets, and a heavier white blanket with two black stripes draped over the end of it. In fact, it’s pretty much identical to our room, but he’s got a fridge. 

A fridge that’s likely filled with alcohol. 

So Roger insisted (or really, if we’re being honest, meekly stuttered) that I need to come to his room now to talk about Syd, but I’m really not sure that there’s anything for us to talk about. He had nothing to do with Syd for many years, and surely wouldn’t pull me aside to give me unsolicited opinions on how I went about caring for Syd in his last few months. Nah, he couldn’t possibly even think of doing that. That’s not within his character at all. Can you hear me rolling my eyes? That’s what’s most likely to happen here, after all.

And he was just acting so fucking weird around us, too. He kept stuttering and fumbling his words...looking away...it was nuts. He started sweating when we were talking. Why would he want to talk to me without David, though? That’s the biggest question on my mind right now as I wait for him to finish in the bathroom. The faucet turns off, and I’m sitting on his bed twiddling my fucking thumbs with no idea what to expect or what to think of this whole situation. I don’t even know how much time goes by before the bathroom door opens and he steps out. He takes a long look at me sitting on his bed, and I’m not sure what it is, but it feels like he’s staring right into me. I stand up as he approaches because I feel like it’s a little inappropriate to be on his bed. I’m not sure why, but I have a sense of foreboding, like somehow I may end up making a mistake. Not sure what kind of a mistake I could possibly make, though. 

I hate this asshole. Have I mentioned that yet? 

Look at him sitting there...obviously fresh out of the shower with his hair damp and falling in his face, and he smells almost like a forest, and it’s driving me a little crazy. And though I haven’t changed yet he’s taken the time to do so...a weathered black t-shirt and dark blue flannel pants. That also struck me as odd…why would he be wearing what’s basically pajamas? If I were to invite somebody up to my hotel room just to talk I’d make sure I was wearing day clothes, even if only to avoid being too familiar. Roger’s weird. 

He takes a long, deep breath as he stands in front of me like he’s getting ready to get something important off his chest, and his eyes dart to the floor like he’s trying to conceal his nerves before he starts to speak. I notice another bead of sweat dripping down his face, and I stare to the side at the wall next to the window to avoid the fear in his eyes. What is Roger so afraid of? He’s never really been a fearful person. He’s one of the most bold and brash men I’ve ever met in my life, but something’s changed. Something’s off.

After a minute of standing around, hands in his pockets and bouncing on his heels, he looks into my eyes and searches himself for words to say. 

"You know, I just think it was disrespectful and pure shit on your part to wait two months before moving on from Syd. It's like you just ignored how much he loved you,” is what he finally comes out with after trying to figure it out. I bet he’s just pulling this all out of his ass to hurt me...it’s not like it would be the first time. 

My blood is boiling like a pot of water left on the stove too long. If I were to unleash all this boiling anger on him he’d probably suffer third degree burns or die. There’s nothing that’s gonna get me into a rage faster than some asshole who I haven’t seen or even thought about in years accusing me of not loving my husband, who I dedicated my fucking life to in the short time I got to be with him. Even his piece of shit sister never stooped to that level, at least not to my face. Who the fuck does Roger think he is, and what exactly does he think he knows, having never spent a minute with us? He must not be aware that Syd asked me outright, actually made a request of me, to find David and rekindle things with him to make sure that someone was loving me just the way he did. It may appear to outsiders like I was disrespectful to Syd, and that I was showing a complete lack of care for him and his memory, and even I can acknowledge how it looks, but someone who had no part in our relationship and marriage should probably keep their feelings to themselves.

I’m definitely showing restraint, but I can’t help but grit my teeth as I feel my heart start to pump blood furiously through my body, especially into my chest. It’s getting tighter with every nasty, vicious word that’s lingering on my tongue just ready to drip out like poison if he keeps fucking with me like this.

"What the hell, Roger? What does this have to do with anything we’re here for? What the fuck does it have to do with you at all? Who do you even think you are, anyway, talking about me showing my love to people when you drove your fucking first wife off because of how you neglected and abused her, and probably your second wife for the same reason? Since when are you, Mr. I’m On My Third Marriage, any kind of authority on relationships or what it is to take care of another person?"

He steps back, and I see a flash of rage in his eyes, but he takes a long, deep breath and soon the rage is concealed by a green sea of hurt that threatens to betray the image of the angry, cocky rockstar he tries so hard to portray to everyone else. I don’t know what his hurt feelings are going to make him say, and so I steel myself for the worst of the worst. What he just said was pretty damn bad, anyway. As the person who originally offered to let me and David spend time together in his hotel room I think it’s pretty fucking hypocritical for him to say I never loved Syd.

The fury in his eyes returns with a vengeance, and he steps up to me, towering over me and getting entirely too close. I start to feel like a cornered, trapped animal, like I’m his prey or something. Why does he want to hurt me so badly with his words? 

"You don't know how much he loved you. You probably don't care. I don't know why you even went to stay with him just to mindfuck him into believing that you cared for him when it's pretty apparent that you never did." 

His words fill me with my own fury now. I'm seeing so much fucking red that the room looks like it’s on fire, even with the stark black walls. Who the hell does this asshole think he is? He's such a bitter, unnecessarily angry, egomaniacal, and ridiculous asshole, and we’ve all always known that. With his stupid smug face and his stupid perfect hair, who the fuck does he think he is talking to me about Syd? When did Roger make any kind of fucking effort to do anything for or with him? We didn't see him once in all the months I lived there, and Syd told me he’d never visited since 1974. Yet you'd never hear one bad word about Roger from Syd. He adored him...considered him his best friend, even. Nevertheless, his best friend Roger showed the most marginal of interest in him all those years.

Meanwhile I was there through all of it. 

Every fall, every coughing fit, every ounce of vomit he ever spilled, every little bit of pain, every storm of tears and every long, painful moment before he died...as well as every smile, every sweet and innocent laugh, every look of pure love in his eyes...I was there for every second of it, and yet Roger thinks he can dictate my feelings to me.

But this arrogant, self absorbed, presumptuous piece of shit called me to his room to preach to me about how much I loved Syd...when he was NEVER even there. For fuck’s sake, he doesn’t even know we’re married, but he thinks he understands what we had or how I feel. Nothing makes me angrier than things like this, nothing. Not even Rosemary pissed me off this bad.

My teeth and fists are clenched, my mouth set in a tight straight line, my temples are throbbing with intense, passionate fury, and I step up in his face, but more like his chest: his strong, hard chest with those pecs and nipples showing right through his tight black t-shirt. He gives me a mocking smile, as if to say that he finds it very funny that his words upset me, and I feel my head start to spin as my brain is shocked with adrenaline. I wanna fucking hit him. I really, really wanna fucking hit him.

"HE IS MY HUSBAND, YOU ASSHOLE," I shout up at his stupid, chiseled, beautiful face in a voice that is so seething and incensed that it is unrecognizable to me. Almost like a demon. Thank god that David’s gone down to the bar with the other guys, because I wouldn’t necessarily want him to hear this.

Roger's mouth drops and his eyes go wide with shock as I feel myself slipping out of control. I'm just so fucking pissed at him and done with him. I just want to knock him the fuck out. Stupid fucker. 

In an instant I raise my hand to Roger, ready to strike his jaw with the open palm of my hand. He grabs my arm with precision and force when I'm about halfway from hitting him, squeezing it and holding it over my head. He's furious, too; I can see the rage in his eyes. But I'm trapped by him. He has such a tight, authoritarian grip on my arm. With my other arm I try to swing my fist at his side to make him let go, but he backs me up against the wall. I hit with a painful and loud thud, and he towers over me with my wrists pinned to it and held in his merciless grip. 

"Don't you raise your hand to me," he snarls with a tone that's warning me not to move or he'll make me pay for it, with his teeth grinding and his jaw clenching and his eyebrows twisting. 

"You fucking snake," I hiss with every ounce of disdain I feel. The side of his mouth curls into a threatening smirk that's somehow disarming. I'm totally caught off guard when his eyes lock onto my own, and he towers over me, his body pushed against my chest. We haven’t been so close since he pulled me out of the way of that car so long ago, and as much as I am trying to resist I can feel my heart pounding with a nervousness that doesn’t feel as bad as I wish it did.

"You can't stand the sight of me, can you? Never could."

"No. No, I don't even want to fucking look at you, Roger." 

"Oh, you don't?" 

"I hate you, you fucking narcissistic asshole." 

He presses me harder into the wall and gets closer to me until his face is dangerously close to my own. His gaze melts a hole in my eyes. Why is he looking at me like that, like he's hungry? Why does it look like he…like he wants me?

"Why are you so mean to me, Maisie?," he whispers to me with pleading green eyes and a flaming smirk.

"Fuck off," I sneer at him. "Fuck off and leave me alone."

The next time he leans closer he stares into my eyes like he wants to teach me a lesson, like I need to be punished, and he leans into my neck, pressing me harder against the wall. The wall is cool and unforgiving against my back, and I stare up at the ceiling to fight off the temptation before I shut my eyes tight and submit.

"Let me go, you piece of shit," I whisper with my last bit of wilful defiance.

He snickers at me, calling my bluff, and I feel him starting to softly kiss my neck with his lips gently trailing my skin. I'm trembling, I'm breaking, but still I struggle in his grasp, trying like hell to escape. I'm frozen. I can't move...or do I not want to?

"I'll let you go just as soon as you learn to be nice. You've always been mean to me...why? I just want to be nice to you. I just want to make us both feel good. Don't you want to feel good?" 

I cry out in anguish. I hate this asshole. I hate him, but I'm thrilled, I'm excited. I think of David to stop me from completely giving in to Roger as I feel my most secret and tender of places start to flood with very reluctant and disgusting excitement. If not for David I may bend to Roger's will. I am uncomfortably turned on. 

"I can't fucking stand you."

"I know you can't, and it makes me so hard." 

His teeth grind just enough on my neck to make me jolt with excitement, an electric shock that gives me nearly as much pleasure as it does sickening pain. 

"Let me go, Roger, or I'll…" 

He laughs at me and stares at me like he's reduced me to nothing but a steak cooked to perfection and ready for consumption. I can see wild desire in his eyes...an inferno that's threatening to consume us both if I can't say no. 

"You'll what? Make another pathetic attempt to hit me? Bite me? Will you kick me in the balls? What are you going to do? What could you possibly do to me pinned against the wall like this? You’ve got no say." 

"I'll think of something."

"You're still not being nice to me, so it doesn't matter. When you're nice, I'll let you go, but you're still being so mean." 

He grips my throat just enough to shock me and squeezes the sides until I can feel a dizzying euphoria inside my head. Think of David. Just think of David, and how he's waiting for me so we can go back home.

"Roger, you dick. You make me absolutely fucking ill."

I keep my mind only on my love so I don't melt under the heat of Roger's scorching gaze. He's staring straight into me. I can't maintain it; I look down toward the floor and he turns my face back up toward his with a sternness that I am so taken in by that it's taking every ounce of discipline I have not to let him have me right here. I glare at him with the fury of a wild and relentless thunderstorm. He makes me shake with rage. I want to spit in his face. He's so gross, but I can't seem to stop feeling tempted by him. It disgusts me. 

"I'll give you something to be sick over." 

I can feel his lips close to my face, so I turn my head away from him and he kisses my cheek and my neck until he turns my face back, and his lips find mine somehow. His kisses are angry, raw, ferocious and unrestrained. He bites my bottom lip and his tongue lingers against it only for a second before he grabs both sides of my face, finally letting my aching wrists go. His kisses become deeper and I am falling victim to his lust as I feel his tongue searching my mouth. I wish I could just bite his tongue off. I try desperately to back further into the wall to get away from him, to get away from my arousal. 

"I can't. Stop it. I've waited for years to be with David again, and you're not going to put that in jeopardy."

"Now you care about being faithful, do you? Didn't matter when your husband had been dead for two months, doesn't matter that David's wife is being cheated on. Didn't matter that you were my girlfriend. Now you're such a good girl, aren't you? When it comes to refusing me you're suddenly a saint. Do you know what you are? You're a succubus. You're a succubus who leaves men in despair for decades. What human man doesn't want to tame a succubus?" 

He grabs a handful of my hair and pulls it so I look up at him, and presses a finger against my throat, takes hold of my hand and presses it against his erection. It’s enormous, it’s so big and girthy and standing at my full attention. I want to squeeze the life out of it, put it in my mouth, lap up all his salty cum and spit it in his face. 

"Fucking gross. Get away from me."

"That's all for you, you little fucking whore." 

"You had your chance years ago, you motherfucker. You had your chance and you chewed me up and spit me out. Threw me out of your fucking house like trash." 

"One man's trash is two other men's treasure, I guess." 

In even more of a rage now I raise my hand to him, and this time he throws me onto his bed. My body collides with his mattress, and before I know it he’s on top of me, ready to take me. He’s ready to force me to bend for him, and I’m on my last legs, but I have to fight. I toss and turn and try to fight him, but he subdues me with his arms and the weight of his muscled body. I try to use my knee to strike his groin, but he pushes my legs apart and holds them down. He's in total control, I can't fight him. I don't want to fight him. Don't see me as a victim: I'm putting up a fight because the fight turns me on. If I wanted to I could find a way to lay him out, and I do want to, but sometimes my sex drive takes over, and that's a dangerous spot for me to be in. I'm in it right now.

"For a woman who doesn't want it you're sure not putting up a real fight. But don't worry, I'll make sure you're willing." 

Finally, I've had enough, and I land a blow right on his jaw. It throws him off, and I get up to run, but he grabs me from behind and again grips my throat. 

"Let me go, you sick son of a bitch," I force out. 

He moves his hand down from my throat to my chest, and he squeezes one of my breasts too hard, massaging it but taking no care to be gentle with me the way David does. His hand is almost one with my body as I writhe and try to wriggle away.

"I want to see how bad of a liar you really are, you nasty bitch." 

He unzips my jeans and slips his hand inside my panties. His finger pushes inside me with no difficulty as he feels my wetness and swirls his finger around in my pubic hair. My body is withering with each second that he pushes his finger lightly against me while grinding his hard, huge cock into my ass. The humiliating feeling of his bulge pushing against my ass and my back makes me quiver and I’m getting wetter with each second. My will is nearly gone, I don’t know if I can summon the strength to fight him anymore. With each circle of his fingers against me I let out more anguished, breathy moans and fall deeper into everything I don’t want to be in.

I'm ashamed of myself, but I'm so turned on. If I didn't hate him so much and if I were single I would be on top of his dick right now emasculating the shit out of him until he just fucking stopped talking. Forever. He's so fucking sexy, I hate it. He's always been so sexy to me, but I can't stand the sight of him. It really fucking kills me. 

"Let me go." 

I plead with a sad desperation, on the cusp of surrender. I can't hold on much longer. If he keeps this up he will be able to do as he pleases with me. 

"Oh, but you don't really want me to. I can tell." 

I squirm, but with one arm around me he holds me in place, and with his hand in my panties he's forcing two fingers inside me, and then he switches back to letting his two fingers press against my clit, circling it. I'm wilting in his grasp: losing my will to fight him off. He's throwing me into a dizzying, shameful ecstasy. I hate him. I've hated him for years, and yet I don't think I can resist if he goes on much longer. Maybe if I'm actually "nice" he'll give up. Maybe it isn't me he wants, but the thrill of knowing he's conquered a woman who can't stand him. I figure I'll turn around and play along until he gets bored. 

I turn toward him, and his eyes fill with surprise. Maybe fear. He wasn't expecting me to reciprocate. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and stare at him, challenging him only with my eyes. Go ahead. Keep trying. I won't make it fun for you.

"You're right, Roger. I want you. I want you so much." 

His eyes widen with surprise, and maybe even with terror. This is one of those moments where I can tell there's a scared kid underneath all Roger's big angry talk and all of his stupid bravado. There's a scared kid who wants to push other people away so he can avoid being hurt. This isn't fun for him anymore. This is real now, very real, and he’s trapped because I’ve knocked the mask off. Good. 

"You do…?" 

His voice is soft, vulnerable, shaky and afraid; I've never heard him sound quite like this. It sounds like this is the last thing he was expecting. Like he was expecting to have to force me to submit, and now that I’ve made myself an equal and willing participant he’s not sure what to do.

The words escape his mouth in a timid flood, and I wonder if he meant to sound so much like Syd. The fire of rage and sex that had been burning in his clear green eyes is extinguished, replaced by black holes of terror. Why's he so afraid of me? But the light is lit again, this time only with less rage and more... relief? It couldn't possibly be. Is this something he wanted? He pulls me in closer and tries to kiss me, only this time he seems softer, more unsure. His eyes are all of a sudden warm: rife with longing. He’s never looked at me this way. His hands grasp at my waist, and his lips about land on mine. Dismayed, I pull away. He lets me go this time, but he looks defeated. Sad. 

"I thought you only wanted that because you thought I didn't." 

"So you don't…" 

"No, I do. I was really tempted, but this is not okay with me. I love David, Roger. He's the one I want. Look, do I find you physically attractive? Yeah, I’m not gonna lie to you, but it doesn’t matter. That’s just silly." 

There's some kind of pain in his face that I have never seen him show. Almost like a wounded puppy. He puts his hands in his pockets and looks down at the floor, and kicks the floor a bit while his tail tucks further in between his legs.

"I see." 

He sounds so deflated that if he were a tire I’d replace him. His eyes meet mine in a moment of genuinity, a moment of pure humanity like he’d wanted something else to happen here, but ended up with the result he wasn’t expecting and maybe didn’t even want. I wonder if he just wanted to scare me, but it really seemed like he was going to try and fuck me for a minute there.

I reach out to touch his shoulder, but he pulls away from me: pushes my hand out of the way and turns his body toward the wall he'd just had me up against. He's gazing at it as if he's trying to figure out where he went wrong. 

"Roger, I wasn't…I wasn't expecting you to come onto me. Are you actually... interested in me?"

"Are you dense? Why in the fuck else do you think I asked you to come here?" 

To talk about Syd, you thick headed douchebag.

His voice, which was just a deep, sensual crackling growl is now only above a whisper. His eyes, before an active, erupting volcano, are now barren craters on the (sorry to say) dark side of the moon. Even his posture, only just now imposing and domineering, has become slumped: pathetic, embarrassed. Something I did broke the entire Roger Waters character. The whole charade is temporarily out of order. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't…"

"Get out, Maisie." I'm not surprised, but it's hard to take. "Just get out. It's better for you not to have to look at me. It'll save us both trouble."


	6. Syd - Cambridge, April 1974 - The Recording Studio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Syd has a tense recording session with the band.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately this is one of only two Syd POV scenes in this book. He isn't slated to play a big role after the final scene I'm going to write for him. So please enjoy ❤️

_So…_

_So...Mum took all my pills away not too long ago...locked them up somewhere in her bedroom and told me I wasn’t to take them anymore. I was doing sort of okay, I guess, for a while. I could still think straight, anyway, can’t seem to do too much of that sort of thing anymore. Whatever. She told me they weren’t doing me no good, that the only way I could really be better was to go without all drugs of any kind… I always slept throughout the day and night. Slept all the bloody time. Never really saw much of anyone … tried to make an album but it went nowhere and it made my head go topsy turvy just as it’s doing now...now that I’m doing an album again, funny innit?_

_But I...I still miss my Maisie every day. Every single day since she got swept away I just miss her so so so so much and want to bring her back to me, but I don’t know where she is at all now. I went to her house, but she and David moved into another one somewhere, and I’ve no way of ever finding it, so I’ve all but given up, since Roger said he wouldn’t tell me nothing about them anymore. Sometimes I still wander along to look for her in bushes or something, under benches, hidden behind trees...she’s never there, but once in a while I still try to find her. Just in case, you know._

_Blast it all, though, she’s never to be found. If I can’t find her now I’ll just have to wait for her to come home. Maybe she’ll be back...maybe she won’t, but I will always make sure that when she does I’ll be there and I’ll be ready. I told her I wouldn’t ever love anybody else, and I won’t._

_I wrote so many songs about her on this silly album I’m doing now that I have to fucking do with stupid bloody David, the bull. The bull! I’ve got to make my new album full of songs about the lady he stole from me...I even named one after her...every time I whine out her name...and I mean every little note of desperation that’s in the way I sing it, and I do it on purpose, I do, perhaps sometimes, but not all the time. Every time I do it though he stares at me for a moment...and then he looks down and I notice him snarl...he turns all reddish and his cheeks get rather big and puffy…and then he shakes his head and sometimes he’ll pick up a fag and light it and smoke it until he’s calmed himself down._

_He’s such a big dumb model bloke, isn’t he? The kind of pretty boy that has nothing inside him but stuffing. A teddy._

_Such a big stupid bull, and Roger made me work with him! Stupid fucking Roger, saying he doesn’t have the energy for me. Saying he doesn’t have the energy to help me tune my guitars and record my album. He doesn’t have the energy to even be my friend most days._

_And David? The stupid fucking wanker couldn’t even speak two words to me. Hasn’t. He hasn’t spoken two words to me! We’ve been working for almost...almost, oh I can’t recall, it’s been a number of days, however. And in all that handful of time he hasn’t once spoken a word at all to me. If he has something he needs to tell me, he’ll write it down on a stupid white lined paper and hand it to Nick to tell me for him. Can you believe how petty that is? And he’ll sit there behind glass in the...in the stupid little studio, and he’ll suggest things to me that I don’t agree with and I try to do my best but he’s such a big snarly grumpy bull always fucking sucking his cheeks in and holding his breath. I hate him. I hate him! I hate him and I hope he dies in a horrible, horrible accident and then I can find Maisie again._

_I wrote this song about her though, perhaps I mentioned... it’s called her name. It’s called Maisie. So she’ll have to know when she hears it that it’s about her, and that I still want her and I still see her the way she was when we rolled about in the grass in my backyard and she had all the emeralds and the diamonds all over her perfect, soft, porcelain body. Perhaps she’ll remember, too, and she’ll think fondly of me, maybe...or maybe not. I hope so…_

_I was sleeping all day on those pills, Mummy said. Sleeping all day long, couldn’t do nothing, was eating far too much. Now I’m getting a bit full in the waist, I’m afraid. And I still pull out my hair when I get nervy, but I think it’s coming out anyway, as I’ve found what isn’t matted has started to fall out in patches. I might just shave it all off and be done with it, in fact. Would rather go about my life not worrying about whether or not I can find a stupid hairbrush or remember how to put it through my hair. Just get rid of all of it. That sounds right liberating, actually, to get rid of all of my hair._

_That’s the door to the stupid drafty studio. Manager told me I couldn’t afford nothing better, that was it. I don’t care. A studio’s a studio, really, when you think about it. I don’t know if it makes much of a difference how much money you spend on the thing. It gets the job done, whatever._

_David is such a stupid wanker._

_I see him first when I walk into the room sitting behind that glass, waiting for something to happen. He’s sitting there ignoring me, but maybe he knows I’m staring right at him. Maybe he’ll look back. He won’t. It’s pissing me right the fuck off, holy sodding fuck. I’m a person, damn it all. A person! I deserve to be acknowledged!_

_I bet Estella would tell me so if she could come back, but she hasn’t. It’s probably better that she hasn’t though because if she came back the rest of the lot might too I suppose and that wouldn’t be pleasant or welcome at all. Last time they came I ended up in that loonie bin._

_I don’t know what it is that makes me bang my fists on the glass like a chimpanzee at the zoo but I do, and he sits at the stupid desk clenching his fists and grinding his perfect teeth until he slams a fist on the desk, bores holes in my eyes … his eyes are like big blue drills and they’re coming right for my eyes. Oh, you should see it! It’s terrifying, he’s going to stab my pupils with those big windy drills._

_A bloody old werewolf, isn’t he? A clydesdale. A stallion. Something big and angry and burly._

_He starts to open his mouth. Good, maybe he’ll fucking say something now instead of sitting there like a stupid lump on a decaying old log that just lies there rotting in the woods waiting for something to feast uponit. He stares at me for another second and I feel like he’s looking at me like I’m a pile of crap on the floor that some horse or something has dropped. Nothing but a pile of shit, that’s how he sees me. Not that it’s difficult to blame him...but he should be thanking me. If not for me going nuts and doing the Very Bad Thing to Maisie she would never have even looked at him twice. I know because I always saw him looking at her and she never took one second’s notice of him whenever I was around. Not for one second. That must make him feel so small._

_“Do you feel small, David?,” I yell through the glass as I bang my fists against it again. I’m not sure what it is that keeps me going, or why I even asked him that, but maybe it’s because if he doesn’t feel small already I’d like to help him feel that way. He clenches his fist and I watch him crumple up a piece of paper and then his eyes dart over to Rick as I can feel the glass starting to shake and tremble against the force of my fists but I don’t care. What’s Rick gonna do? “Do you? Do you feel small, David?”_

_“Alright, Syd, come on. Let’s get the recording out of the way, and then you can go home. David’s not here to cause any trouble, mate. He’s doing us and Roger a favour being here to do this with you, and you should show him some respect as such, because without him your album was never gonna get made, alright? Nobody wants to work with you, Syd. The rumours are everywhere. People know how you walked off the stage at the last live show you played and left all your band standing up there looking like a bunch of fucking wankers. They know about your first album and how that bombed, and how you acted throughout the entire process. People don’t want to work with you. David’s your only chance. I know there’s bad blood with you lot, and I get it, he got your girl and your band...I know it’s hard for you...but if you want this album made David’s your one and only shot. So let’s just blow this session out of the water, and then you can go and do whatever the bloody hell it is you like to do with your day.”_

_Rick gets both of my shoulders in a tight grip, pats me on the shoulder, walks me over toward my guitar, sits me down and puts it in my lap so I can play it. Couldn’t have made it any easier on me unless he played the bloody thing. David never did give me any kind of a response, by the way. I look over at him again, and he’s gone back to ignoring me. He’s bent over the desk looking all serious and shifty eyed. I don’t know why he never said anything. Perhaps I don’t mean nearly enough to him for him to give me a response, but damn it...I want to put my fucking fists through his face until I break it. I wonder if all that beautiful creamy skin would shatter like glass when I hit him. I wonder if I could crush a shard or ten under my trainers._

_Do you think Maisie knows David is working with me, or do you think he lied to her about it? Do you think Maisie is afraid of me now? I hope she isn't, but I think she likely is, and that terrifies me and makes my insides feel all explodey and broken. I never meant for her to be afraid of me, it was only … I thought someone was coming to take her away and hurt her, and I had to stop them. I thought that what was coming would be worse._

_I’m warming up on my guitar now, and I want to believe this comes naturally to me, but I’m not quite sure it does. It’s a funny little tune I’m playing, a little bluesy, but it’s just coming out. I didn’t even plan it. I think David’s recording it, he’s got his headphones on like he’s listening. Maybe he thinks this sounds alright. I don’t understand him. I would never have come in and taken Maisie away if it were him. I would have left them to settle their matter on their own. Is that fair? Perhaps that’s not fair. Perhaps if I heard a woman screaming I’d bust into a house … I shouldn’t have locked Maisie up, and then David wouldn’t have come. If I had never locked her up she never would have looked twice at David Gilmour._

_When I play music sometimes my thoughts just wander, but today I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I can just get lost like that today. It’s a different sort of day today than it has been on the other days since we started recording this LP._

_Today we’re recording the song that it’s most important for me to get perfect. We’re recording the song that could change everything for me, and for David, too. We’re recording her song._

_I know David’s heard me do it before, we just haven’t recorded it. See, I think I mentioned that David knows I’m doing the moaning on purpose when I sing this song, and I am. I wasn’t lying about that. It’s just that now, well...we’re recording it, so we have to do it over and over again a bunch of times until I get it right, and based on how things have been going and how nothing is ever good enough for Mr. Bull over there stuck in that stupid cubicle he’s going to have to listen to me moan her name over and over and over again until his head explodes, and I don’t mind at all._

_“What song we doing,Syd?,” Nick yells over to me from behind the glass. David must have asked him to ask me because he’s such a bloody coward that he won’t even talk to me himself like a man. David looks very much like a man, but he’s such a little boy that it’s right funny when you stop to think of it._

_“Maisie,” I shoot back at him, looking David square in the eye as I answer, making sure he can tell that I know exactly what I’m doing. “We’re doing the song Maisie.”_

_“Right,” he yells back at me, and I notice a roll of his stupid ugly eyes. Stupid Nick. Never did care for him much._

_I start up my guitar part...it’s slow and devastating. It sounds like helpless, miserable longing...that’s what it is,after all. Low, booming, gloomy notes, sort of. Then the drummer behind me starts off too...very slow tempo, almost bluesy, all of it. I start to think of her._

_I remember meeting her for the first time, and how I felt my breath being stolen away when we smiled at one another. I remember rolling about in the grass with her, all full up of one another, consumed by one another. I had flowers and leaves and vines in my hair and her body and hair were covered in piercing pure green emeralds and glittering white diamonds. I remember the times before I cracked and shattered everywhere...the magical walks through the Cambridge Park and the times where I taste tested her brownie batter and she made me dinner, and I gave her massages and I ate her sweet flower every night to put her to sleep. And then I can’t help but think of...of the Very Bad Thing I did, and going to hospital feeling so lonely without her…_

_“Maaaaaaaaaaiiiiiisiiieeeee....”_

_It takes a few seconds to whine out her name. I can even hear the sharp, groaning desolation in my voice. I'm so lost without her. I miss my Maisie so much...so, so, much all the time. It pierces my heart every morning that I wake up without her, and soon I’ll have so many little holes in my heart that it may stop beating._

_I strum a few more bluesy sounding notes on the guitar and the drummer follows suit, now doing sort of a dirge sounding bit._

_“Maaaaaaaaiiiiiisiiieeee…”_

_Another one. Now I find my eyes wandering toward David, and that’s when I see him actually starting to drill holes in me after all this time. I’m terrified. He’s cutting into my insides, and I don’t care for that at all. I can’t continue if he’s going to stare at me that way. His eyes look like glinty, pale blue chunks of ice floating on the ocean, and they’re about to freeze me over, aren’t they? David may murder me if I don’t take care to stay to myself. But I wanted to see what he was doing, because fuck him for stealing my girl from me. Fuck him for stealing my fucking band from me._

_I stop playing my guitar. I feel like I’m stuck in place.Can’t move, can’t talk. Can’t think about anything except biting off David’s stupid head and spitting in his bloody steaming neck hole. The guitar falls out of my hand, guess I couldn’t grip it anymore, not sure...haven’t the slightest idea, really …. Wow. Wow…_

_The guitar goes BOOOOOM on the ground and then its strings sort of vibrate upon hitting the floor until the thing is going BWOMWOMWOMWOM or something. Maybe BOIOIOIOIOING. Everybody’s looking at me now. I don’t know why they all look so worried...is something sneaking up on me here? Is there something behind me? I’d ask, but I still find myself unable to speak...still unable to take my eyes off of David, and I think he’s starting to feel afraid of me. Wanna know how I know?_

_He’s trembling like an ickle baby over there behind the safety of his glass. I bet he thinks I’m gonna smash right through it and eat his brains. I think maybe I might, but then Maisie would be sad if I did, so I probably won’t. I know she’s not going to come back to me now at least for quite a long while, and so the thought of her being sad makes me so very sad...so I won’t eat David’s brains, but I would rather like to beat on him just a bit. Perhaps just put a fist through his cheek or some such. Make him cry. Make him fear for his life, but I’d never get anywhere near killing him, I think I just...I just want to hit him once or twice._

_He’s biting his pretty plump lips, but not in a sensual way. He’s tearing the skin on his lips off with his teeth. That’s sort of gross, don’t you think? Gnashing at them like that. Wow. He’s such an animal. A big snarling animal. Now I think he’s trying his hardest to keep his eyes off of me, but he’s too frightened to take them off me for too long before they find their way right back to me. We lock eyes sooner rather than later, and now he’s shaking and balling his hands into fists. He stands up and paces back and forth for only a little bit of time before forcing his way out of the little glass area and then he stampedes down the hall and out the front door. I don’t know if he’s coming back._

_Rick’s coming up to me now. His eyes are all saggy and his brow is all furrowed. He looks like an old leather handbag or something, all crinkly and shapeless. Tired. He’s tired. Why’s he so tired for? He looks all scrawny and worn out._

_“Syd... Mate, you alright in there? You’re staring a bit. Zoning out on David, and you’re making him feel right strung up. Please try to stick to the music. Nick is going outside to talk to him, but we really don’t need a fight here today. Can you try to stay perhaps just a bit more focused so we can finish up what we’ve got to do today?”_

_“Why does he have to be here?,” I moan. “I wanted Roger to work with me.”_

_“You know how Roger is. He doesn’t like to put himself out too much for anybody. I think it’s all just sort of overwhelming for him, and you know, he doesn’t deal at all well with feeling overwhelmed. I wouldn’t take it personally if I were you. He’s just Roger. You can’t get water from a stone, after all. So David’s all you’ve got, if I’m being honest. I told you, Syd, unfortunately you don’t have people knocking one another over to get to work with you after what happened with us and with your first album. This is your one chance.”_

_“I’ll do my best. It’s just...he took her away, Rick! He took Maisie away and now I’ve written all these songs about her, and I’ve got to sit here and sing from the bottom of my very bloody soul while he watches me and knows exactly what I’m singing about?”_

_Rick’s face gets all dark and cloudy, too. He looks like he’s stewing in a thought. Trying to figure out how to say something. He’s got something difficult to tell me, and he doesn’t know how to tell me. It’s about to drip out of him one way or another, whatever it is. Look at his temples throbbing like they’ve got a life of their own._

_“We all swore to one another that none of us would say anything to you, but fuck it, you’ve come to me to complain and I feel like you deserve to know the truth. David didn’t take Maisie away from you, Syd. He got Maisie out of a fucking shit situation that YOU put her in because you’ve gone completely bonkers, and for some reason you blame David for it, and it doesn’t seem that you blame yourself for even one second of the entire thing that you did to that poor young woman that you sit here and whine about like a god damned fucking toddler. Giving David these long, desperate, ghastly stares as if he’s done anything wrong, when the only one who’s done wrong here is you, and no one tells you because of how fragile you are. I’m going to join Nick and David out front for a few moments if you don’t mind,” he rattles off as he turns away from me and forces his way out the door._

_Filled with rage for only a second I pick up a beer can someone left on a stool and I toss it out after him. It thuds against the floor with that tinny sound beer cans have when they hit the floor. Plink! Crunch. Echo._

_I’ve gone and fucked this all up, as I often do with things. It probably shouldn’t take nearly as long as it is to record one LP, but I can’t seem to keep to myself. Singing this song...it needs to be perfect. I need to find a way to calm myself. Maybe I can record the song on my own. I think that’s what I have to do. They’ll stay out there for perhaps a bit longer and then I’ll just do this song on my own. So that way I can sing her song the way I’d sing it if she were here sitting in front of me, and I don’t need to worry about David._

_The record button clicks when I push it down and I go back out to the studio and sit back down on my chair._

_I stare at the wall, but then I see her sitting there in front of me just as she looked on the day I met her: a tiny little creampuff with big brown eyes and flushed cheeks in a white collared shirt poking out through a red and black argyle sweater. She was wearing a knee length red skirt and black and white saddle shoes with lacy ankle socks. She had these funny, springy, fun ringlets tied up in a high ponytail with a red hair tie, and her hair bounced about behind her as she walked behind Roger, turning her head to glance at me once, and then she looked away and smiled. I remember standing beside her, and pulling one ringlet down to watch it spring up again, and I giggled and pulled down ringlet after ringlet only to watch them keep springing back up and watching her blush. I was so excited that I kept yelling ‘Spring! Spring! Spring!’ as they bounced and I was laughing so hard. She giggled a bit too, and I hardly even noticed Roger standing behind her watching us._

_That was quite a long time ago now...seven years. Seven years ago now Maisie and I met one another, and my life changed forever...and so did hers. I fell in love with her seven long years ago and I’ve never not been in love with her since then. I’ve never gone one day without forcing myself to believe in the depth of my heart despite all my doubts that she’ll someday come home to me. I’ve been waiting for her for that many years now, can you believe it? It’s hardly felt like that much time, but I’ve been so sad that I can’t tell what about time is real anymore and what isn’t._

_And now I’m singing this song…I’m saying her name over and over again, I feel like I’m moaning and howling. Perhaps I am. She feels so close, but so far away. I know she’s not far from where I live, but I can’t find her. Sometimes I wander neighbourhoods, but I can never remember where I started and where I’ve already been. Something happens, my mind wanders or something._

_Maisie’s still standing in front of me while I sing and moan and strum my guitar, but now she’s starting to morph. She’s starting to change into something awful and horrifying. Her pretty ringlets weave and snake into one another and pull at one another until they’re all matted up and primitive, and her dark, hollow eyes and her once beautiful, plump, flushed cheeks sink into her face. She’s gaunt. Her skin and lips are ashen white, and her lips are cracked and bleeding. She’s been biting them off, I can see that they’re red and patchy. She stares at me with wide, haunted, disappointed and terrified satellite eyes and slowly shrinks into herself and slides down the wall until her hair is flopped over her head that’s buried in her arms, resting on top of her knees. She’s as I last saw her when David pulled the door off of me and threw her over his shoulder and took her away...she’s sad, lonely, terrified...she doesn’t understand why the one who loves her has done this awful thing to her...she stares at me like she has no idea who I am anymore, and she doesn’t, for the boy that I was would never have thought to do anything like that to her. Do I have any idea who I am anymore?_

_I want to reach for her, I want to hold her close to me and never ever let her go again. She’s shivering there on the floor. She’s crying. She’s crying so hard now, and I just want to make every single tear that I made her cry float away until they’re so far from her that she can’t even remember ever having cried them. I know if I can reach for her and I can bring her into my arms, and show her that I know now that there was never a serpent, and that my friends were never real...and they were wrong about everything she would be so relieved. If she could only see that bloke who did that to her...well, he simply isn’t me, not anymore, then I could make her smile again. My heart quakes for her, and I stand up from my stool, I lean my head into the microphone and I begin to sob as all the syllables and sounds of her name escape my lips._

_She haunts me with one more long, desperate stare and then I feel my guitar slip through my fingertips, but I can hardly hear it when it hits the floor. All I can see is the slowly fading silvery outline of Maisie...and I try like hell to grab a hold of her before she poofs into thin air and evaporates, and I’m left all alone like I always am._

_I see Maisie’s shadow all the time, everywhere. Her shadow haunts me, it tears me apart, it keeps me awake at night in a cold sweat. Those wide, horror stricken brown eyes...they once trusted me, you know? Those eyes were filled with trust and love and devotion but all that slipped out of them the moment I shut her away and I broke her heart._

_I broke her heart._

_But I’ll always remember her in her emeralds and her diamonds._


	7. David - London, August 2007 - The Bloomsbury Hotel - David and Maisie's Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David can't get past his suspicions that something isn't right with Maisie. What he finds out may change the course of music history forever.

I got back from the pub downstairs quite a bit ago when we split for the evening on account of Rick feeling far too knackered to continue, and an impatient text to Nick from Amelia. It was a good conversation we had, but the entire affair was tinged by the sinking feeling that my dear friend Rick has all but shriveled away. He’s gotten so thin and so sunken since I saw him last, when Kim and I had him round for a dinner party mid-March. I pestered him about whether or not he’s eating enough, and he let a snarky quip out about all the food he should be eating finding its way into my arse, and that’s when I knew he couldn’t be too far gone. 

And now, I can’t shake the feeling that something with Maisie isn’t right. 

She came back from Roger’s room about 10 minutes ago, and when she opened the door I could see something lingering in her eyes that wasn’t there before she left to go see him. She looked shaken, spooked, and maybe even afraid, and she slumped over and then curled up next to me on our bed without a word. I had my headphones on listening to some Eric Clapton, trying to relax after that proper shit show. Roger sang all of my parts, and I really tried not to let it bother me, but what fucking bollocks, huh? From the looks of it, he seems intent on stealing everything he possibly can from me. How long before he tries to take credit for writing the guitar parts that I wrote? Certainly would not put it past him. 

Anyhow, I took Maisie in my arms and she was very hollow: like a husk, or something. She didn’t speak...didn’t really even move...all she did was lie there while I held her, and I could feel her mind drifting far away from me...far from the hotel, even. It felt like a chill might have found its way right up her spine … she trembled, or shuddered, perhaps. The psychic bond that we’ve always joked about but that has always been so real to us, I could feel it starting to waver as her consciousness flew from the room and off into who knows where. Something was keeping her very far away, but I couldn’t begin to put my finger on it. It was such a stark contrast to how energetic and funny she was on the combined high of marijuana and the show. 

I craned my neck to check on her down there curled into my armpit and my chest, and my fear was confirmed: her arms were embracing me, and her head was nestled into my armpit, but her eyes were fixed in a wide, haunted gaze upon the ceiling...disbelieving eyes that had seen something that had been seared into them forever. It was that moment when an uneasy feeling started to brew deep in the pit of my stomach like I’d eaten something rotten, and that feeling has only been growing more steady and powerful ever since she stepped away to wash her makeup off. When her face was clean she let me know that she was really feeling like taking a shower. I enthusiastically volunteered to get in with her, sure that she’d want to fuck away the stress of the day, but she shrugged me off and said she was too sweaty and that she just wanted to get clean. She couldn’t meet my eyes, and that really concerned me. There was a barely concealed shame behind them that she tried her damnedest to keep from me, but I couldn’t miss it. Maisie’s hornier now than she was when we were young, if it were possible. For her to just dismiss me that way is only adding to the feeling I’m trying to ignore.

Roger’s done something. That miserable, slithering monster did something to hurt her, and I’m going to find out every last detail of whatever it is that he had the audacity to inflict on her, and I’m going to put him in his place for it if I can manage to summon the courage to actually confront him about it. But depending on what I can manage to get her to tell me: if it’s what I think it is, I cannot be held responsible for how I respond.

The abrupt end of the shower stream hits harder than perhaps it would on an average day. It sounds especially cold and sudden, and that feeling isn’t helped by the threatening hiss of a shower curtain pulled open too fast. On an average day she’d step out of the shower, dry her body in the bathtub, step out on the mat, lean over the side of the bathtub and wrap her hair in an old white t-shirt. Then she’ll sit on another towel and apply moisturiser all over herself, and that’s when I reckon I should try to go in there. She’s always relaxed when she’s rubbing that lotion into her skin and focusing entirely on working it in until every inch of her skin glows in the light. 

I’ll give her about two minutes before I rile up an already unstable situation. 

Those two minutes are two minutes from hell, though, to be quite honest with you. I have always suffered from anxiety, but this is something toxic, and it’s a kind of anxiety that I don’t know if I’ve dealt with in decades. My insides are quaking. My stomach feels like it’s flying up on a trapeze with no net on the ground, and my legs start to shake when I stand up and approach the door to knock. By the time I’m knocking on it I’m ready to buckle and fall down. I’m not sure if my unsteady legs can hold my body up for much longer. 

“What is it?,” she asks, and though her voice has calmed some I can still hear an apprehension and an iciness in it that sounds so foreign to me. She can sometimes take a sour or sardonic tone, but she’s never sounded so cold. 

“Just let me in. It’s important.” 

There’s a very pregnant pause, and then she speaks up. 

“Fine. Come on in.” 

She’s sprawled out on the floor on a white hotel towel, sitting atop another white towel just like I thought she might be. Her thick legs are stretched out in front of her, and I look her over and marvel in the rubenesque beauty of her more mature body while she works a handful of thick white cocoa butter into her collar bones and breasts. Even though I can’t take my eyes off of her, and even though under normal circumstances she’d be sharing in my gaze, she still won’t meet my eyes. 

I give her a few seconds to acknowledge that I’m behind her, but even though I know she knows I’m here she doesn’t make the effort to do anything but keep working that lotion into her skin. I can only imagine the steely, spooky look she’s wearing now while she pretends that she can’t tell that I’m standing behind her and trying to talk to her. 

“Maisie, what’s going on with you? You’re behaving rather strangely. I can’t recall the last time you seemed so aloof with me.”

“I’m not being aloof,” she spits back at me.

“You’re literally doing it right now. You never talk that way.”

A tense and heavy silence hangs around us now. I wait for Maisie to react in some way, but she does nothing for a few minutes until she sets down the white tub of lotion on the towel next to her and lets her hands drop to the floor with a helpless surrender on either side of her body. The anger and aggression that I sensed coming off of her sheds off of her like a skin, revealing a tired and frightened one...perhaps a thinner one that was waiting underneath.

“The sort of abruptness of that reply, Maisie, it’s not like you at all. What’s gotten into you, then, dear? If something happened in there....if he … if he did anything to you... I deserve to know that,” I push through, hard as it was. 

I wanted to take a bit longer to prepare her for that before I said it, but it just came out of me. I don’t think I could have helped myself if I really tried to. There was never going to be a right time to say anything. 

Maisie crosses her arms over her knees and rests her cheek on top of them, her eyes burned into the cheap art piece on the white tiled wall. She sinks into her body like she’s resigning herself to something, like the life has gone out of her, and her legs are pushed up against her chest. I could hear a pin drop in this room. If nothing had happened she’d have said so already, wouldn’t she? But that’s not what’s happening at all. She’s frozen in place until all of a sudden she isn’t, and her shoulders begin to shake as she moves to rest her forehead down on top of her arms. There’s some sobs stifled into the protection of her arms and her knees, but they’re not as quiet as she’d like them to be. 

Now that all the shower steam has dissipated it’s rather easy to see her trembling there on the floor. Her funny little t-shirt turban is flopping around at the top of her head until it comes undone and falls to the ground, revealing her damp silver hair, and her sobs seem to grow stronger with every second that passes until they’re full blown sobs and moans. 

I’m seized by this urge to rush to her side, but something tells me that the best thing I can do right now is stay away and let her comfort herself. There will be a right time to hold her later, but I don’t think that time is now, frankly. She truly doesn’t want to be touched; I can tell by the way she shrinks into a shell with her shoulders hunched over her chest. If she could grow porcupine quills or something like that to keep me away right now she really might do it, and that’s part of what doesn’t seem right. It’s terribly out of character for her; Maisie loves to be touched. The entire time we were together if she went into one of her moods I could always reach for her, help her breathe, and calm the entire thing down. We could be calm and silent in three minutes; she just always needed that little chemical release, I think. 

That isn’t the case tonight, however. 

“Look, it’s just…” 

Her voice trails off. It falters and drifts away like ashes on the breeze... there were some more words she meant to say, but she couldn’t find them within herself to actually produce. She’s frozen in place, her forehead still resting on her arms and her face hidden between her knees. She still won’t even look at me.

“You can tell me anything, Maisie. You know me. You can’t scare me off.” 

She struggles to hide a few more lingering sobs before she trudges out a response.

“It’s just...David, he…”

“What did he do?”

There’s an urgent demand in my voice that I’m not accustomed to. It’s an instinctive, brutish, cerebral sort of aggression that only Roger and Syd could ever really make me feel on this deep of a level. No matter how I have tried to feel that sort of deep anger, perhaps even hatred, toward other men...perhaps when they’ve made passes at Kim throughout our marriage, or when I worked with men who were almost nearly as difficult as Roger, but never truly as almost awe-inspiringly difficult. 

Dreadful, heavy seconds pass as Maisie fights to find the words she needs to say, but I already know what she’s going to tell me. Isn’t it obvious what she’s about to say? Her posture is the posture of a woman who’s been violated and frightened. She’s folded into herself like a sad piece of origami with a putrid stink of shame so strong coming off of her that I might choke on it. She’s ashamed, and she’s disgusted with herself. 

I know exactly who Roger Waters is both professionally and personally, and I have always seen in him this slithering, reptilian creature lying in wait to strike at the next conquest. Ready to sink his piercing sharp fangs into whoever the lucky target is and drain them of all their love and emotion with his steely cold venom. It was only a matter of time before he tried to sink those fangs into her, too, wasn’t it? 

The silence in this room is so frosty that it’s biting at my ankles and my ears. I could swear I felt my blood freeze. She’s still hunched over herself, perhaps protecting herself from whatever truth she’s resigned herself to telling me, or perhaps protecting me from having to see the reality of the disturbing state she’s in.

“He … uh…,” she starts. 

She raises her head, and after a second or two of carefully considering her next move, she turns around and faces me, finally meeting my eyes. I instinctively recoil when we share a look. Her normally bright, sparkling black diamond eyes look like deep, sunken, soulless pits of horror, guilt, anger, and shame. Her mouth hangs slack as the words that we both know I don’t want to hear and that she doesn’t want to have to say dangle on her tongue. 

“He forced himself on me,” she finally continues as my heart starts to race. 

I knew it. I fucking knew it. My temples start to throb beneath my skin, and I bite down so hard into my lower lip that I can feel the delicate skin starting to crack. There’s a metallic taste of blood in my mouth now that I think about it. 

“He...well, he was … it was … he went crazy. He’s never done anything like that to me before; in fact I’ve never seen him get like that with anyone before. The words….the words to describe what he did...I don’t have them. I’m sorry. I don’t have it in me to tell you anymore for now. He was off the wall, and I had to fuck with his head to get him to leave me alone, but then whatever was wrong with him all just stopped; it was like he was flying high on mania for a few minutes and then just spiralled into a weird, catatonic depression. I tried to hit him twice to fight him off, but it didn’t work… he was too fast and too strong... so...I kissed him to psych him out, and it worked…and I’m so sorry.”

Although her puffy, bloodshot eyes couldn't hide that she was crying before if she tried, she managed to get all of that out without shedding a single tear. Either she’s gotten far better at wrangling herself out of these situations (and that’s very possible - she’s 20 years older, after all), or the gravity of what she’s just forced herself to tell me has hit her so hard that she can’t summon the tears.

My face is fucking hot, and it’s getting hotter by the second. Soon I may be able to fry an egg on my head, who knows? I’m sweating bullets, I can hear my heart thumping a furious beat in my throat as my mouth goes dry, and I clench my hands into fists when all the muscles in my body get rigid like rigor mortis has set in. I can’t get all the possibilities of what could’ve happened in that room out of my mind. This one particular image of Roger on top of Maisie on top of a ritzy hotel bed, pinning her arms down above her head with one hand while he explores her body with the other as she twists and turns in defiance is burned into my memory forever now even if that isn’t what happened. 

He always wanted to manipulate her into his bed, didn’t he? He always wanted to subdue her and have his way with her. I know he did; I fucking read about it in that blasted journal of his that I made the mistake of breaking into to see what he’d said about me and the rest of the band. Roger always fantasised about doing exactly this, and I couldn’t stop and think long enough to recall that I’d ever read it before agreeing to let him take her to his bloody room. All I was concerned about was walking away so I didn’t blow my top at him and ruin the show. 

I’m going to have his fucking head.

“David...David, please don’t be angry with me, I really tried to fight him off first before I kissed him. I tried.” 

“No. No, babe, I’m not angry at you. You did what you had to do. You had to fuck with his head to get him off of you? I believe it. You’re strong, but you’re not that strong, and I’ve had a row with Roger before..I know how fast he is.”

“I understand if you want to go, David,” she mutters in defeat as her eyes fill with tears and she shifts her sad gaze to the white tile floor.

“I’m not leaving you,” I assure her as I find the opportunity to crouch down and pull her into my arms in a tight embrace before I leave to go knock Roger’s fucking head off, “but I’m going to knock his fucking head off.” 

“No, no, David, you don’t need to do that,” she urges as she grabs a hold of my arm and tries to pull me closer to her and restrain me. 

“No, Maisie, I’m sorry,” I insist, slipping my arm out of her grasp and standing up straight and crossing my arms over my chest.

“I’ll be back, and we will climb into bed together, order a bottle of wine, turn on the television and calm ourselves. But first, I’m going to show that sneaky little twat that he can’t get away with any of his fucking shenanigans anymore. He’s put us all through quite enough, and I’ve let it slide time and time again because I thought it better not to start problems, and I thought for a really fucking long time that if I were just loyal enough he’d eventually reward me somehow, or at least not drag me into his depths along with him and try to screw me over by fucking suing me for control of the band that he fucking walked out on, by the way,” I start to shout as Maisie’s face twists into an impatient scowl with her mouth pursed up like a cat’s asshole and her brow furrowed over disapproving eyes. That’s the ‘just keep spewing your bullshit’ face. I only ever got that look when she thought I was making a stupid choice. She doesn’t want me to go fight him, I know, but I’m not ready to stop ranting. 

I’ll try, though. I take in a long, deep breath in and then let it drift out, hoping it’ll take all of my negativity with me, but it didn’t this time. It should have helped, as it usually always does, but it’s not even touching the kind of fury I feel. I can’t even stop myself from continuing to spew whatever words are pouring out of my mouth and out into the world. 

“Well, perhaps if I’d started a few problems with Roger in the past rather than allow him to start problems with you, with the band, with me and everyone else in his life that ever dared to get close to him...perhaps things would have turned out a bit differently for all of us. I gained nothing... fuck, none of us gained anything from me sitting with my thumb up my ass all these years while Roger blew through everyone’s lives like a tornado and fucked up everything in his path with all of his crises and his chaos and his crippling addiction problem, and his sick obsession with having to be a better version of every other man he was ever envious of (and there are more than enough of us). I was nothing but a fucking sad little lap dog for him while he tore everyone else’s lives apart and fucked up our band in the process, but I won’t do it anymore.” 

She reaches for my arm again, desperately trying to pull me to sit down next to her so she can try to get me back down to Earth for a second. I crouch down again for another minute and muster all the calm I can to reach out my arm and cup her cheek with my palm. She sinks into my touch, leaning her face against me, and somehow I manage a smile, but can feel it fade as fast as it came. 

“Don’t go, David. It’s not worth it. It’s really not…” 

I shake my head at her, pull my hand away, and place both of them in between us as I pull myself to stand and back away toward the door. I’m out of calm energy. There’s no more left to give, and if I don’t back away she’s going to think it’s her fault. The more I think about him fucking putting his hands all over her I’m seeing blood red everywhere. There’s no more calm to be summoned, only rage that’s boiling over me.

“I have to do this. He’s gotten away with far too much for far too long, and I’m not going to fucking allow it anymore. This was the last straw. You stay here, okay? You just stay here.” 

“No,” she declares. “No, I’m not going to let you go and debase yourself like that.” 

She shoots me down in a second as she jumps to her feet and slides in between me and the doorway, crosses her arms and glares up at me like a furious little imp, but the way her nostrils flare and her lips purse is admittedly of the terrifying sort. 

“You are a good man, David,” she continues, “You are so much better than to stoop to Roger’s level and make an ass out of yourself in public, and you aren’t the type of angry, crazy man who starts fights in hotels. You are good and kind, and you have a lot of dignity, and you don’t need to throw all that dignity away on someone like him and act like you’re on Jerry fucking Springer. No. We are going to barricade ourselves in this room like adults, and we’re going to go with the plan you made before, and that’s it.” 

She stares at me with her deep, fierce brown cat’s eyes that are daring me with no fear in them at all to challenge her, and she balances one hand on a naked, rounded hip. Under different circumstances, this aggressiveness would make me hard as a rock. Hell, I’d probably lift her up and throw her on the bed right now, but to be quite honest, I only feel like shrinking. 

“You’re right,” I admit after a few deep breaths that quell the surface of my anger, and a long gaze into Maisie’s unflinching eyes. “You’re right. I’m not going to hit him, but I’m going over there and I’m going to tell him exactly where the fuck he can go for this. I can’t sit idly by and say nothing to avoid his ire anymore. It’s gone on long enough, Maisie. I’m sorry.” 

“If I hear fighting in there…,” she warns, and I can tell she means business because she starts shaking her head and smirking at me, and then lets a sensuous little chuckle spurt out of her throat and her nose like she really doesn’t believe me. 

I reach my hand out and I grab onto the softest part of her upper arm and squeeze, and I smile when I catch her own lips starting to turn up into a reluctant smile. It’s funny when she rolls her eyes at me like that with that little smile. We could never really stay angry with one another for long. 

“No. No fighting. I’m only going to tell him what he can do with himself.” 

“Promise me, David,” she warns me as she picks up the spray bottle full of water next to the faucet and starts to spritz her hair. 

She sticks up her arm and tries to wag her finger in my face with an impish smile, but I pull her in for a kiss so passionate that I’m surprised by it. I’m absolutely gripped by this primitive, erotic urge to fight another man for my woman, and to show her exactly why she chose to be mine in the first place. I pull her into an embrace that I know is almost certainly too tight, and I grab the back of her head and bury my hand in her hair. Our lips collide over and over again as we thoroughly enjoy one another until I have to force myself to pull away from her. If we go any further I won’t make it out the door, and I won’t be able to rest for the night if I don’t go to his room and chew him the fuck out. 

“I promise, Maisie. I won’t hit him.”

And with that I am on my way out the door and down the hallway.

I was intentionally being vague, by the way.

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. Maisie - Cambridge, April 1974 - David and Maisie's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maisie, Cora and Amelia gather for some gossip and Amelia reveals some exciting news. When David comes home, all hell breaks loose.

_I’m so happy to see you. I hope you’re well. Thank you for checking in on me again; I know it’s been awhile. My, how we’ve both changed, huh?_

_Things are going so well right now! David and I bought a house together that I love almost as much as I love him, Pink Floyd has blown up before our eyes, I’m going to be 25, and I haven’t had a nightmare in two years. I’m starting to think about maybe trying to start a career path, but I can’t really figure out what I want to do, so I’m taking my time to think about it before I start anything. I don’t want to jump into anything and then have to stop when I figure out it’s not really for me, you know? I want to know for sure what it is that I want to do with the rest of my life, and I’m not really in too much of a rush to find out._

_David and I are happier than we’ve ever been, but that’s not saying much because I don’t think we’ve ever really been unhappy. Even when I can’t go out on the road with him Cora stays here with me and we live together for a few months, so it’s not really that much of a problem. We’re like a bunch of single college girls or something, we stay up late watching movies and eating ice cream and such. Of course, I miss David, but being with her makes it a little bit easier. That’s not often, anyway, but I’m beginning to think that if we can survive those few times I don’t go, maybe I wouldn’t have to go with him all the time, and that might be okay. Maybe it would even be good; maybe I could find something for myself here. It’s not like I wouldn’t visit when he was in France or Germany or something. The trains go there. It’s almost a five hour ride each way, but he’d be worth it. We would be worth it. For now though I’m happy going with him as often as I am because sometimes Roger brings Cora along these days. They had a huge blowout fight over it a few years ago_

_The only thing that’s got me lately is David maybe talks about marriage a lot more than I’d like, I guess. I just don’t think that’s something I really want with anybody now. Last time I thought about that with somebody it ended really badly for me, and I don’t know if that’s ever a road I really want to go down. Plus, I’ve never seen it work for anybody, really. David claims his parents had a good marriage, but I can’t really know because I didn’t see it. I do know, though, that mine sure didn’t, and my aunt sure didn’t, and Gloria’s parents sure didn’t, so if there’s ever been a really good marriage I haven’t seen it happen before. With how good things are between us now maybe it’s better that we don’t get married and we just enjoy living together and being in love. I know I should tell him all of this, and I really do try sometimes (though perhaps not as hard as I’d like to make it seem), but I’m scared that if I say I don’t want to get married that he’ll decide I’m not worth wasting his time or his future on. He seems to really want to get married and have kids, and I really don’t know about kids for me either, but I don’t want to lose him. So I really just try to avoid talking about it, but I do worry that he feels bad because I won’t talk about it. I wonder if it would help if I told him that If I wanted to get married I’d only ever want to marry him. It probably wouldn’t, though. I hope he just doesn’t bring it up anymore and we can avoid having to talk about it._

_Oh, that’s right. I guess I was trying to avoid this subject, but I’m sure you’ve heard about it from somebody and probably wanted to know what I think about it!_

_Well, here’s what I think about it:_

_I think that Roger Waters is a sneaky, conniving, manipulative, lazy, weak-willed, spineless, venomous overflowing trash can of a human being for ever even thinking of asking David to do something like that. If I were Roger and had committed myself to working with Syd and found myself unable to tolerate it the last person I’d ever think of asking to take over the project would be the guy who pulled his ex girlfriend out of his house, and is now dating her. I’ve made no secret of my feelings about this to David; he knows that I think Roger is doing this to punish him for something, and he agrees, but neither of us can quite figure out what it is he’s being punished for. David thinks Roger is jealous of him, and I don’t blame Roger one bit because David is everything that Roger isn’t and wishes he was._

_I was a mess when David told me about it. I really tried to stay strong, and not cry, but when I thought about David going in there and having to be with Syd every few days I couldn’t stop myself. David wouldn’t tell me much about Syd except that he’s living with his mother, he’s not taking his medicines anymore, and he’s been very unwell. I guess knowing that really set me up to worry, because I don’t know what kind of violence he might be capable of now that he’s had five years to harden to the sad reality that must be his life._

_So David has been at this for a few weeks, and he still hasn’t told me really anything about it. He doesn’t talk to me about the songs, he doesn’t talk to me about Syd, he doesn’t talk to me about anything. He comes home every day, gives me a kiss, makes himself a snack and goes down to his studio to play the guitar and write music for a few hours. Some days he’ll say a few words before he goes downstairs, but in the past few days that’s becoming less and less frequent. Most days he heads downstairs without a word, and I’ve learned not to ask him about it, just to let him go and do my own thing until he comes back upstairs. I wish he’d tell me something about what he was doing in those sessions, but maybe it’s better that he doesn’t. I don’t like to think about how Syd is probably giving David such a hard time. But I have to admit that sometimes I do wonder how Syd is doing. I could stuff it down and not feel it anymore for a long time, but now that Roger talked David into doing this it’s been harder to ignore because I know that David is going to the studio every few days and dealing with all of these feelings that he probably has about what happened between the three of us that day. And I guess I kind of feel like it’s counterproductive to just not talk about it, but if that’s what David has to do to get through it then that’s what we’ll do. I can deal with my feelings on my own if he can deal with his on his own._

_Anyway, speaking of marriage and weddings and stuff, Rick and Jane are getting married in a few months! Cora has a wedding on the brain too, but I don’t see it happening any time soon, unfortunately. Roger just doesn’t seem interested in anything more than staying at one another’s places every week; they haven’t even moved in together yet. Can you believe that? Roger’s such an asshole. I tried to talk to Cora about it a few years ago and we got into a huge fight about it and didn’t speak for a few weeks. She just doesn’t want to hear anything negative about Roger or their relationship, so I’ve gone back to the way I used to handle things: I don’t say anything that she doesn’t want to hear anymore. If she doesn’t want to face the truth about Roger I can’t force her to, and I’d rather have her friendship than try to change her mind. She’ll come around eventually, but I just hope she comes around to it before she gets too hurt._

_But, yeah, it’s been nice lately because Jane has been hanging around a little more. She doesn’t really talk much more than she used to...well, maybe she talks a little more than she used to because she used to never talk to us at all, and now she pops into a conversation every few minutes to add something, but sometimes when she’s not here Amelia will come round to see me or Cora and she’ll spill a little bit of Jane gossip, and that’s where we find ourselves today!_

_I don’t know what David told you about the living room, but I got it done up so nice after we moved in. When we bought the place it was a drab white room with stodgy old tan carpeting. I had it painted cream with a white ceiling and white borders, and I had one wall paneled with wood. I had the carpet torn up and replaced with a fuzzy white cut-and-loop carpet, and I bought all new cream colored club chairs, and a brown leather lounger with a yellow pillow tossed on it to sit around a wooden glass-paned coffee table that sits on top of a Persian rug. The bay window in the front is framed by brown and white chiffon curtains, and a passerby could see the wood paneled wall with no problem, and I’d be lying if I said part of me didn’t do that on purpose. David picked out a painting for the wood paneled wall. It’s done by some woman named Junie Adams; it’s a painting of an open book on top of a pile of other books being read by candlelight, and I fell in love with it when I saw it too. (That was a good day, the day we bought that painting.) Thanks to the bay window, the light of a sunny Cambridge afternoon fills the room with a sunny, warm, friendly feeling that makes me always want to park myself in there every time I’m home. So naturally when my friends come over we always find our way in here somehow._

_I’m sitting in the brown lounger with my legs sprawled out in front of me, and Cora and Amelia are sitting across from one another on the club chairs. I remember Cora fondly as this beautiful, airy looking goddess with blonde hair piled high on top of her head, but that’s a stark difference compared to how she looks now. She’s taken to wearing her hair long and pin straight with stark brow brimming bangs that look striking when their silvery blonde sits right on top of the dark black charcoal that lines both lids of her glimmering, crystal blue eyes. Her pearly pink satin lips are barely closed over a lit cigarette as she passes her pack to me and shakes it for me to take one. She’s got on a pair of khaki bell bottom jeans with a pink and white floral pattern button up blouse tucked into them, and she sits cross-legged with one wooden platform sandal dangling carelessly off of the sole of her foot. With her mouth hanging open and barely clinging on to her cigarette, and her eyes wide with undaunted, fascinated curiosity she is clearly waiting with baited breath for whatever Amelia’s got to say._

_Amelia’s tawny skin glows in the sunlight naturally, so she doesn’t ever wear any makeup besides her trademark red lipstick that makes her look sultry, especially now that she’s got that cute chocolate brown Jane Fonda shag cut. She’s got on a red shirtdress with a white collar, white cuffs on the sleeves, and a white tie around the waist coupled with white sandals that have a low wooden heel. From her ears dangle golden hoop earrings, and she’s paired the earrings with a gold bracelet that sits loosely on her wrist. With her own cigarette dangling out of her mouth she gives us a mischievous, devious smile before she opens her mouth to start speaking._

_“You’re not going to believe this, ladies,” she warns us. “This is something you’re going to need a ciggie for, Maisie. I know you don’t smoke, but this is something else, let me tell you.”_

_I have to be honest with you and tell you that I put on a show about being more interested in this gossipping than I actually am because I don’t feel comfortable enough to tell Amelia that I don’t want to know. Cora’s the same way. I feel like on some level we’re really just doing this to humor Amelia, but maybe we’re just too chickenshit to say anything to her about it. Just seems odd to me to come around and spill your friend’s secrets like that, I guess. I wonder how Jane would feel if she heard this, or any of it, because this happens more often than I think Jane would find forgivable. But I guess because I’m not speaking up about it I’m just as bad. It makes me pretty uncomfortable. I like Amelia well enough, but this is something about her that I really don’t like or respect._

_“Well, spit it out then, you cow!,” Cora teases as she urges me with a flick of her wrist to light the cigarette I took out._

_I avert my gaze to the carpet to be discreet about how far my eyes have rolled into the back of my head. I know Cora doesn’t enjoy hearing this, either, but I think she’s better at pretending to be interested in it than I am. Cora passes her lighter into my hand and I tuck my hair behind my ears, bend over the cigarette and breathe in, flicking the lighter with my thumb to summon the little flame. The cigarette tastes like a repulsive mix of rotting garbage and gasoline in my mouth, and the thick blue-tinged smoke is so thick and so pungent that between the toxic taste and the caustic smell I have to focus very hard on my breath to avoid choking or throwing up._

_“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I choke as I twist the butt of my cigarette into the ashtray on the table next to Cora’s chair, extinguishing the burning bundle of dried plants, paper, and embalming fluid in a frantic effort to just get the smell off of me and the taste out of my mouth._

_Amelia patronizes me with a slight shake of her head and a small, sexy giggle that leaks out of her mouth, that pretty cherry red blossom mouth with the condescending smirk. One corner of her lips is tipped up in a smile that’s telling me I’m weak because I can’t handle the taste of a cigarette. She shakes her hair out, shrugs, and we let a moment go by before any of us says anything because for some reason a tension has settled in between us just like it tends to do when she comes over here to gossip about Jane. She tucks her cigarette into one of the grooves in her ashtray, takes a quick sip of the white wine in a proper wine glass that I served her at her request, and after she places the wine glass down on my table (not on the coaster!). . There’s a burning, devilish gleam in her sizzling brown eyes as she lowers her face and peers up at us from beneath her brow. With that tilt of one corner of her mouth she grips the arms of her chair and continues on, that smirk growing into an excited smile._

_“Well, it turns out that Rick and Jane weren’t even thinking of getting married just yet. But…,” she starts, “...there’s going to be a baby!” Her voice turns up in the end as the devilish gleam in her eyes becomes excited, or even ecstatic, and she squeaks and giggles at the tail end of her sentence. “Oh, it’s so exciting, isn’t it? Finally, maybe our Johnny and Samantha might get a playmate! Will you two get on it already, though?,” she chortles with a wink. (Amelia’s children, by the way, have cousins to play with all the time because when Amelia joins Nick on tour they stay with her sister - who has three kids -.)_

_“Heh…,” I manage, and I hide my sneer behind the palm of my hand. “Well, I’m glad for Rick and Jane. Some people really want children, and when that happens for them it’s always a blessing.”_

_“Perhaps someday,” Cora muses, and then pulls herself back into the moment with a “So Jane is really pregnant, then? You’re not playing a silly prank on us, or anything?”_

_“She’s really pregnant! She’s such a twiggy thing that they figured they’ll be able to hide the belly a little bit in the wedding dress. They wanted to have a proper wedding before she got too far along, but the band won’t be home until September, so that’s why they’re having the wedding then. She’s right torn up about Roger booking studio time that day without asking anyone, by the way, and she wants Rick to say something to him about it. Not likely, that. Rick doesn’t ever want to cause trouble. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before Rick Wright ever stands up for himself or asks anything of your boyfriend,” she spits with a sidelong look at Cora, who shrugs and glances at me out of the corner of her eye._

_“That’s lovely!,” Cora exclaims, and the two of us can’t help but smile at the news, even if we didn’t necessarily want to hear it._

_The air falls silent again after the three of us gab about babies and pregnancy for a few minutes when it becomes painfully apparent that Cora and I don’t have much of value to add to that kind of a conversation, and that’s when I hear the front door cracking open and the jingling sound of keys being placed in our key bowl. David must be home. I glance at the clock, and it’s 5, which is when he said he’d be home. Time flies when you’re having fun...or something._

_Hearing the sound of David entering the house, both Cora and Amelia sit up and straighten their clothes, and when he enters the room I smile at him, but his face falls when he sees I’ve got guests. I can tell he’s been angry, and he was counting on coming home to an empty house or just me, and that guests are just gonna stress him out. I should probably send the girls home._

_He must have been blasting music on the radio on his way home, trying to get all the anger out. I wonder if today was bad. Even when he comes home and doesn’t say a word I’ve never seen him look so angry before after one of these recording sessions. His cheeks are beet red, and he’s breathing heavy. I can almost see smoke coming out of his nose like a dragon after he’s just spat a heavy stream of lava onto a city and razed it to the ground. I hope to god that no one hit anyone else and that whatever it is that happened today ended peacefully with no one getting hurt, especially David._

_Meeting his eyes, I can see the desperation in them and I can almost hear ‘Please send them home’, so I nod at him and he greets Cora and Amelia and steps away. I hear his feet banging on the stairs on his way into the studio, so I move the conversation to something a little lighter and more casual, and once there’s a lull in the conversation again I turn my head toward the kitchen where the door to the basement is and I shrug my shoulder._

_“I think he had a bad day. I’d love for you ladies to stay longer, but it really seems like it’s better for you to go home if that’s okay. I wanna see what’s going on with him.”_

_Cora looks at me sympathetically. As if she were the guilty party, she’s been apologizing to me for Roger forcing this upon David every time I’ve seen her since it started. She feels terrible, and she never hesitates to tell me this, but I always reassure her it isn’t her fault. I can see in her beautiful icy blue eyes that she feels genuine pain over the drama that her boyfriend has unwittingly (or wittingly, who knows, but I know what I think) caused._

_“I hope it’s nothing serious. The last thing anyone in this group needs is any more Syd drama,” Amelia snarls as she rolls her eyes, not even thinking for a second that her remark might upset me, but I’m able to brush it off. Amelia doesn’t often think before she opens her mouth._

_“Amelia, come now, don’t … it’s ....”_

_Cora widens her eyes at Amelia like ‘You’re supposed to know better’, but I wave them both off. This is the last thing I need to be dealing with right now that there’s David to worry about._

_“Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. I’m not as fragile as I used to be. We’re 5 years removed from it at this point, right?”_

_“Sorry, Maisie. I’m just as annoyed about this stupid album as you are,” Amelia says, and I nod my head in agreement but secretly I’m filled with this angry feeling because I don’t think Amelia can understand for even a second the kind of stress that this has put on David and I._

_“Yeah, I just feel so guilty that Roger did this, Maisie. I’m so sorry. He was going to work on it himself, but -”_

_“Girls, it’s okay. Stop apologizing to me, there’s nothing that can be done about it now, and Cora...it’s not your fault that Roger apparently couldn’t handle sticking to his commitments and pushed off the responsibility of doing something really, really difficult onto his bandmates. It isn’t your fault at all and it had nothing to do with you.”_

_The two of them stand up and begin to gather things, but that’s when I wrap Cora in a tight, warm hug. Her lithe body fits well in my arms, and as much as I wish it didn’t my stomach does some flips and I can feel a few butterflies flapping around, but I put the thought from my mind. Even if I were single I don’t think Cora likes women at all, but it’s a shame. I never thought blondes were my type until I met her. Obviously, I don’t intend to pursue anything, but I can’t help it. She’s so fucking beautiful that it’s hard not to think about her that way sometimes, but her friendship is more than enough for me, and what a good friend she is and always has been. She returns my hug and squeezes at my waist, clutching me against her and leaning her head on top of mine._

_“Roger can be a real prat sometimes, I know, but he isn’t all bad, Maisie, I promise you. I’ll scold him for a half hour when I get home, I will. He’ll come to practice tomorrow a changed man,” she whispers as she pats me on the head and pulls away. “Or at least, I’ll try to make him come to practice tomorrow a changed man, but I don’t think it’s so simple, as I’ve been trying to turn him into a ‘changed man’ since 1969!”_

_“You know,” Amelia chimes in from across the room, gathering her things, “if you want to change a man this badly for five years with no results then perhaps he isn’t worth your time.”_

_“Hush, you,” Cora hisses at her as she squeezes my hand and we all head toward the front door. “I’ll be the judge of that. When I decide Roger isn’t worth my time I’m sure you’ll all know.”_

_“You’ll tell me first, though, won’t you?,” I tease, and she smiles brightly at me._

_“Why, I wouldn’t dream of having it any other way,” she says, and with that the three of us say our goodbyes and the two of them shut the door behind them._

_I turn my attention toward the kitchen, and slowly make my way toward the studio door. I’m scared to even open it, but I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it’s because I know for a fact I’m going to hear things about Syd that I’m not ready for, or if I’m worried on some level about being the recipient of David’s anger, even though he’s never blown up at me before or even really gotten anything other than mildly frustrated with me. My heart thumps faster and heavier as my feet hit each step, and once I reach the bottom I take a deep breath in, hold it, and then let all the anxiety out. It occurs to me then that maybe the best thing to do if I want to foster some sense of calm would be to grab him a beer out of the mini refrigerator at the bottom of the stairs, so I do, and I twist open the bottle so it’s ready for him._

_“Hey,” I say as I round the corner, clutching his open beer in my hand._

_When I look in on him I notice he’s sitting in his office chair hunched over his pale brown wooden writing desk with his chin in one hand, and in the other he’s practically squeezing a bottle of beer in his grip like he’s trying to break it. His brow is furrowed, his lips pursed up and his muscles rigid. He loosens up upon hearing my voice and turns to look at me, showing a weak smile that’s clearly contrived so he doesn’t have to talk to me about whatever it is that’s got him so upset today._

_“Hey, babe,” he says in a faraway manner, letting his eyes fall to the floor. “Thanks for the thought,” he continues, motioning toward the beer I grabbed him, “but I’m well ahead of you. I won’t say no to another, however, so why don’t you pass that one on over here, then?”_

_“You got it,” I respond, setting the beer bottle in front of him and then leaning against the wall next to his record player. He turns his face from me, staring down at the wood of his desk again, pensive like he wants to tell me something but he’s afraid to rock the boat. “Is something bothering you?,” I ask tentatively after a few minutes of standing there staring at him pretending I’m not in the room._

_“No, I reckon I’m quite fine. What makes you think something’s off?,” he asks innocently, masking his resignation to the fact that I’ve called him out and now he’s got to tell me whatever it is he was trying to avoid. He tucks a lock of silky dirty blonde hair behind one ear and I watch him swallow hard, almost like he’s got a lump in his throat._

_“Well, I mean, you haven’t really been yourself for the past few weeks at all, I guess. Since you started working on this...on this album…” - I’m tense as hell when I stutter out the words because I’m trying so hard to avoid saying Syd’s name - “you’re a lot quieter, you seem distant and you’ve been pretty grumpy, and I have no idea what’s bugging you. You spend hours down here every day after you come home, and I know you’ve got this album and your own work that you’re doing for the new Pink Floyd album, but you’ve been busy before and never been as distant as this, and I’m worried about it. I know whatever it is can’t be so bad that you can’t talk to me about it. We talk about everything,” I plead as I watch his shoulders tense up._

_He takes a long swig of his beer, finishing it, and then tosses it into the green metal garbage pail next to his desk where it makes a ‘clink’ sound once it hits the bottom. For a minute that ‘clink’ is the only sound in the room as we stand at an impasse, me desperately wanting to know just what the fuck has got him so far away, and him desperately trying not to have to actually tell me what it is. Then he picks up the bottle of beer I brought in for him, takes another large sip, and sets the bottle down on the desk with a ‘bang’ that’s just a little too hard for my liking. Loud noises can sometimes make me startle easily, and it’s only compounded by the fact that this man in front of me, my man, the love of my life, is having to clearly fight off feeling some kind of aggression that I’ve never really seen in him before now, even though we’ve been together for four (I guess technically five) years._

_David is silent for another few moments as he collects his thoughts. He’s tipping the empty beer bottle back and forth, and then he switches to rolling it back and forth on its bottom. He lets out a low, exasperated groan, takes a harsh deep breath in, puffs it back out with a ‘whooooo’, and takes one more sip before he finally sets the bottle down, stands up, and starts to pace back and forth in front of me. His beautiful icy blue eyes are all crinkled up into frustrated squints, and I see his hands ball into fists as his speed picks up. Finally, he stops in his tracks and he turns to face me._

_His face is red, puffy, sweaty and twisted up; it almost looks like he would be crying if he weren’t so angry. He looks at me for a minute, but then he hides his face behind his hands and clutches at his own hair. I walk toward him and try to put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but he gently pushes my hand away and turns his back to me again._

_“Give me a minute. I’m not angry with you; I’m angry with this entire situation I’m in, and I’m trying to figure out how to tell you in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m angry at you. I just don’t know if I can express myself all that calmly right now, and I don’t want to startle you at all.”_

_“Look, whatever is going on with you, it’s been really bothering me. I feel like you’re drifting away from me, like you’re keeping secrets from me, and I don’t like that. We don’t keep things from each other, we never have. Why are we starting now? I know that when you get down or you’re angry you don’t always like to talk about whatever it is that’s bugging you right away, but this has gone on for weeks.”_

_I make my case as persuasively as I possibly can, with my hands resting on my hips and my face widening in desperation. It feels like he’s slipping away, and I can’t take it. In the past I might have broken down and cried in this kind of situation, but I’ve grown since then, and I can’t make this about me now; he’s on the verge of losing control. David’s clawing at his scalp an pulling at his hair, red in the face and teary-eyed, breathing heavily. He’s never done this before. He clenches his eyes shut and holds his lips shut tight until he can manage a few deep breaths, and then after his emotion passes, he opens his mouth to speak and rests his hands at his side. When he opens his eyes they rest completely on me, and his body starts to tremble and his voice starts to shake as words leave his lips._

_“Do you know how difficult it is to make this album with Syd?,” he starts. “Do you have any bloody idea how excruciating it is to sit there hour by bloody fucking hour, day by day, week by week at this point and listen to uncontrolled, unmedicated, loony old Syd barely be able to function as a musician when he used to be absolutely brilliant? And then imagine having to sit there and record him wailing and moaning and leaking word salad from every orifice, and having to think of a way to salvage whatever load of bosh he’s thrown at you that day! And the entire time you’ve got to act like it’s fucking fine and normal to sit there behind glass completely ignoring a bloke you once called a dear friend because he’s gone mental, he’s brought nothing but pain, trouble and stress into your life since you joined a band with him, and you’re still living with his fucking shadow in your band and darkening the doorway of the home you share with the love of your life after seven god damned years!”_

_My heart starts pumping loud and furious like horses trying to gallop their way through my chest, and I try to catch my breath, but fail. Tears are welling up in my eyes, and my guts are clenching as I hold my breath and suck my tears back. I stand motionless, staring up into his frantic, desperate face as he tries so hard to fight back his demons. His eyes well up with tears again, and this time they start to form little trails down his cheeks that I’ve never seen before. He pauses, wipes the two tear trails from his face with the sleeve of his dusty blue long-sleeved t-shirt, and focuses on me again._

_“And the songs...the songs, Maisie, so fucking many of them are about you. So, so fucking many of those tracks, or whatever the bleeding fuck they are that he’s subjecting me to, are all about you! I have to waste the days… days I could be writing music, or spending a quiet time with you here at home or out on the town with everyone else until we’ve got to pack up and go back out on tour again … on a man that tormented my girlfriend who’s wailing out her fucking name over and over again like a desperate werewolf alone in the night. That’s right, he’s turned your name into a song. He named a song after you, and he just...he moans and bellows all through it, whining and groaning out your name and going on about diamonds and emeralds, and god...I fucking walked out of there today because of it, you know? And I don’t want to go back there tomorrow at all, or the day after that, but I’ve been mandated to because everyone else is so fucking ready to wash their hands of it that now we’ve got to work on it every day until it’s deemed acceptable enough to be turned into a record, and do it as fast as possible.”_

_“Oh?,” is all I can manage as my breath is stolen from me and the wall of my stomach is being beaten down by ramrods. All of the meager hope I had that maybe Syd had moved on and forgotten about me has been dashed in one devastating second. “Is...is that so?”_

_“Yes. I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this. I know I can be a prankster, but this is fucking serious, Maisie. Today…today he couldn’t stand to be ignored by me for one more second...he decided that after two weeks of giving me these haunting death glares and slicing through me with daggers every time he looked at me that he absolutely must have my attention, and he banged on the glass they’ve sat me behind with his fists and acted like a proper raving madman. I kept myself fucking still as a rock the entire time, but I could have put my fist through a wall I was so livid. And after Rick pulled him off and got him as settled as he possibly fucking could Syd has the nerve to just start howling your name out over and over again while strumming his guitar and calling it a song. He wanted me to try and fight him. I’m convinced that he did, because he did seem to be rather deliberate in the way he was trying to antagonize me. He’s lucky I didn’t knock his fucking teeth out.”_

_“Can you please give me a hug?”,” I manage to whisper after a few silent, tense moments that linger like unwanted guests. “I’d really just like a hug right now; I thought maybe you’d want one too because it seems like this has been really hard on you.”_

_In a second, David seems to melt, and as he wraps me in his arm I feel his body start to shake again. In all the years I’ve known David, and in the five years we’ve been living together, I’ve never heard or seen him cry. David is very sensitive, and he’s certainly emotional, but he doesn’t cry. For him to break down like this, to shake and sob into my hair...this is too much._

_I know exactly what I have to do. I don’t want to do it, and it’s not often that I do it, but it’s unfortunately necessary. I will not see my boyfriend come home miserable every day, so stressed that he explodes and breaks down in tears. He is too good to me, to his band, and to everyone in his life to have to go through this. I didn’t want him to do it in the first place, but he felt like he couldn’t say no to Roger. So I have to go right to the source to fix this problem._


	9. Roger - London, August 2007 - Roger's Hotel Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: minor violence
> 
> David confronts Roger.

I watched her stare at me, bewildered, as she turned around and walked out without saying goodbye.

"Wait…" 

I mumbled too quietly, and too late, but I'm almost relieved she didn't come back. I want her here more than I can possibly tell you, and I meant to tell her that at first instead of whatever it was that I ended up doing. All I wanted to do when I invited her up here was use the Syd story as a cover to tell her how much I love her, but I ended up spitting more unjustified word salad at her and then forcing myself on her instead. Why the fuck did I do that? What on earth possessed me to violate her that way? 

I want her company, but I couldn’t give her anything if I tried because I feel so rejected by her, even though I have no right to. I want her so badly, but she doesn't want me at all. Maisie really wants to fuck me, I can tell, but I don’t only want to fuck her. I want more than a fuck, but I don't know if she does. It certainly doesn’t seem as if she does. 

If she asked me if I've thought about her, I'd say barely, if at all. If someone else asked me if I'd thought about her, I'd say absolutely not at all. I'd tell her she was nothing but an afterthought, if even that. I don't know. You're unfortunately not on my radar all that often. I can hear myself saying it now. Cocky shit I am. It's no wonder I'm always alone. Forgive me for being a vulnerable man (is there anything worse that I could be?) for a second, but I can't be this way with anyone else, for as you can see, I’ll only be rejected, and you're obviously curious about it by now. Still here, aren't you? 

Forgive me; this is so pathetic of me to admit to you all at once like this. I just want to feel loved by someone. It's always sex... that's the only way I could ever let any of them in. It's always been me shutting them all out after the spark is gone, and being unwilling to try to let myself be loved. I really want to try to earn Maisise’s love, for I’ve realised I can’t possibly steal it. It’s bloody awful to feel so cut off from other people, to live without real intimacy even though I’ve someone who offers it to me every night on a silver platter back in New York, to feel alone in bed every night even with someone else next to me. I have never admitted this, and you may never repeat it to anyone, but I'm just so lonely, and I fear I may always be, and that I always have been. I'm so lonely that I want to fucking disappear because it would feel so much better than yearning for human connection so much that I have to drink from a bottle of vodka to block out the despair for even a few hours. I can't even find words to represent the depths of my loneliness with any accuracy. I'd do anything to be loved: anything, but people never really love me, and they always leave me. Do you ever feel so deprived of love that you just keep putting yourself in the same position to lose over and over again and fuck up every relationship you’ve ever had? I don't have close friends, or any children, I get married the minute I feel appreciated ever since I dragged my feet with Cora. I can't seem to connect in a real way with anyone. I just want to be loved, damn it all. I just want someone to stay with me. Maisie is so loving. And I don't think I'm entitled to her love, not anymore, but I want it. I want to earn it. 

It's pathetic for all three of us to have not moved on from this one woman, isn't it, and conversely, for her never to have moved on from one of us? I mean honestly… what the fuck is wrong with all four of us in all our different tesselations not being able to let go of one another? No matter what the lot of us may say, it never worked with anyone else: romantically, sexually, or musically. Why can't any of us let go? I could never love another man but Syd, Syd waited like a good dog for Maisie, David longed endlessly for her and she for him, and I got hooked again after being lucky enough to have forgotten. What's the reason she can fucking put me through this? What must she put herself through? She's fucked up like I am. You know it. You've figured that out by now. But is it really any wonder?

So, whomever you are that has chosen to listen to me pour out my ridiculous thoughts and feelings: imagine that you are an innocent, sheltered 19 year old virgin who's never even kissed a bloke, and who's been shipped off to a foreign country by your neglectful, narcissistic parents. Imagine that your aunt and uncle treat you like a burden, and your cousins act like you're their servant or completely ignore you. Finally, you start to make friends in this whole new country you’ve had no choice but to move to, and things are looking up for you. Then some dickhead approaches you, and he knows from the beginning he only intends to use you. And he fools you into thinking he’s serious about you just to get you into bed, takes your virginity in a way you do not deserve, and lets you live with him. But he ignores you, he shuts you out, he's impatient with you, he never makes you cum. All he does is fuck you, go on about himself, or lock himself away to write music and brood. And soon he’s driven you into another boy’s arms with the way he’s neglected and abused you, but after you’ve gone, like the dumb tosser he is he realises that somewhere along the line he accidentally fell in love with you and he only figured it out after he'd thrown you out.

I was horrible to that girl. That poor girl. I fucked her up so bad that she got tangled up with Syd and then he locked her up in a fucking closet. Thank god for David, I guess. I fell so hard. It was bollocks. My heart raced fast and hard like a horse racing toward the finish line every time I saw her, and I remember wallowing in such desperation for her only to look at me. Really look at me for longer than a passing moment: to take stock of me and for a second to think ‘perhaps Roger could love me’. That's why I fucking stared at her today. That's why I stared at her after I beat that little pissant in Detroit. I want Maisie to look at me...I want her to see me. I mean really see me. To see me not for who I pretend to be, not for who I seem to be on the surface, but to see me for the soft boy that I am underneath all of it, and to take pity on that boy and to take him in her arms and love him for the rest of his days.

I really didn't want her to see me, though, I suppose, for everything I did was a secret. The following, the peeping. The rose I left every Valentine’s Day that she always thought was from David, and that David was more than happy to take credit for even though I knew he had to know it was from me. All the listening and learning...it was always a secret. Just one rose, by the way, yes. One rose with a piece of paper that just said "You fascinate me", or some dumb cliche bullshit like that that I tried so hard to make sure didn't look like my handwriting that I’d leave somewhere for her to find every year. I couldn't do the lilies, that was Syd's thing, and I don't know shit about any other flowers. I’d buy a bouquet of roses for Cora from a flower shop and take one out for her, or pluck it from someone’s garden, or something, and leave it outside her hotel room door or her front door every year for her to find, each year hoping perhaps she wouldn’t buy it when David took the credit, and wonder who else could possibly love her that much...but that never happened. 

Ever since she left Cambridge, went back to Maine and started seeing David again I can't seem to put her behind me, and it may just be worse than it was in our younger years, as I’m not really working anymore to keep myself distracted besides a tour here and there. I am consumed by the power she has over me; I am a slave. She really is a succubus. One possibly sensual look and a man can't get away. Maybe I misinterpreted the way she looked at me before we said goodbye at Syd’s service. I probably did, but I thought I saw a playful gleam in her eye, maybe beckoning to me. That look...even if she didn't mean it...that look ended any fight against her charms that I had possibly been able to put up.

I always kept my eye on Maisie. Always. There was not one time where we were around one another that I wasn't silently keeping my eye on her: studying her, being fascinated by her, and making sure she was never fucked with. There was a time with a fan, I think I just mentioned him, who was drunk and got handsy with her when she was having a cigarette for that brief time that she took them up. She didn't know I came out through the door behind her. I fought the fucking prick off. Got him right in the face. That sure fucking chased him off. I always wanted to protect her. Maisie noticed me all but a handful of times, and we had some tense moments throughout the years. Times I went out of my way to make sure she didn't know how much I cared, or maybe sometimes it wasn't quite like that. Maybe sometimes it was the opposite: I went out of my way to show her I cared without saying anything, and hoped she got the message, but I doubt she ever did.

But it was fine with me that she barely noticed me, because I was so scared to tell her how I really felt that maybe, even in the most intense moments of longing, I never really wanted her to. It didn't change anything, her not noticing me. It never changed a thing. I didn't want Maisie to see me because I didn't want to act on my feelings and have her reject me in favor of Syd or David. I didn't want to do anything or say anything to her, so I almost never did, except for those few moments when we shared something that I don’t think she knew was special to me. I barely spoke to Maisie in all those years. Barely any words passed between us. But I was always there, and I always, always loved her.

I don't know what came over me. I let myself be overcome with passion, with fury, and with lust in a way that I’m not sure I ever have before in my life, and I… forced myself onto her. She was fighting me, but was it half-heartedly? She was losing that fight, and she knew that I knew it. I just about had her. Imagine the love we could have made if she had only submitted the way I know she wanted to. But why is that the only way I can figure out how to connect? It's always sex. I hide behind sex. 

I have all the money to do anything with, I have all the clout in the world, I have millions of adoring fans who throw themselves at me sexually and in any other way that they can think of when they stumble upon me, I am lauded as one of the best musicians of my time. But at the end of the day I'd rather have none if it meant I had her to share my life with. I’d rather have a boring, humdrum, routine life with her than all the fame and reputation that I’ve got now without her. I want to open my heart, to be bare and vulnerable with a woman, but I can't. I fuck and I lose interest and I'm done. I get married, I think I’ve found the one, withdraw, and get bored and find every reason to hate my wife, and keep it up until she leaves me. But at night when I cannot fight anymore to avoid myself I'm just in anguish, especially when I realise that all my former bandmates have found or did find love, Syd right up until the last second, and I couldn't keep a woman around to save my life. Hell, David has two women....one of whom is killing me without even realising it.

Yet again I'm in a hotel room, alone, breaking open a bottle of booze and drinking it straight until I can forget her for a moment or two, and get away from the pitiful, empty shell that is what has become of my life. I don't want to forget her, though, not even for those few minutes. I've been in an agonising depressive state, and sometimes when I am in bed at night I'll think briefly of her and sleep. Otherwise, I barely sleep. Or I sleep too much.

My heart broke when Maisie told me she wanted me too, but it turned out it was just a ploy to psych me out so I’d back off of her. I bet this is just how she felt when she was a kid and I lied to her. Imagine how it must have felt to have your first significant other do that. Well, fuck. This doesn't feel so good, and her self defense isn’t even half as bad as what I did then, or what I’ve just done. Perhaps if I'd taken things more seriously from the beginning we could have been happy together. Perhaps we’d still be happy together today. Maybe she never would have discovered that David was really the right one for her, because she'd love me. I could have saved her from ever having to be tangled up with Syd if I had ever let myself feel my true feelings for her. 

She told me she wanted me, and then she touched me... and I broke when I felt that warm, gentle touch that I’d always craved. I wanted to take her hand and kiss every inch of her smooth skin. My wall that I’ve put up between myself and the world so no one in it can find who I really am behind it came tumbling down in a second as I prepared to expose all of myself to her. I want her so bad it's sickening. She told me she felt the same, and I wanted to kiss her, but with some tenderness. I wanted her to know I could want more than sex, that I wanted to try to be with her, maybe. I was about to let myself be vulnerable, and then she pushed me away. The wall went right back up. 

If I could only tell her.

It’s at this moment, the moment that I’m about to drown myself in a bottle of vodka (always choose a room with a mini bar, that’s what I say), that a furious pounding comes on my door.

Could she really be back? Is it possible that when she reached her room...perhaps David was in the shower...perhaps he’d gone to visit Rick for a nightcap, and she was alone, and she realised while deep in thought about what we’d just done that she wasn’t lying when she said that to me. Perhaps she found herself going mad for me, feeling things she never once thought she could feel, and she’s back to tell me and to fall into my arms so we can start our life together. 

But the pounding sounds so urgent, and so angry. It’s hardly the knock of a woman in love, but perhaps the knock of a woman mad with passion. One can only hope.

I approach the door with apprehension, unsure of what I’m going to get when I finally open it. It’s entirely possible that she hasn’t gone mad with passion, but instead has come back to scream at me and put me in my place. It’s not as if I’d blame her if she did, but I could grab her and kiss her...I could change her mind. I place my hand upon the knob, shivering from the uncertainty, and I swallow the lump in my throat as I turn the knob and open the door. What awaits me is not at all what I expected, but I should not, I suppose, be at all surprised. 

My heart starts to beat so fast that I’m afraid I might succumb to cardiac arrest when I see David standing in front of me with his hands balled into fists and his face as red as a tomato. I can almost imagine him as a bull about to charge, fuming, foaming at the mouth like a rabid beast. He takes a deep breath and practically blows me over with the strength of his enraged exhale, and he steps right up against me, his chest almost touching my own. His eyes bore a hole through mine as he bumps his chest against mine with so much force that he almost knocks me on my ass.

“Move out of the way. I’m coming the fuck in,” he fumes.

“David...let’s...let’s talk this out,” I stammer, trembling with terror as he advances on me. 

“There’s nothing to fucking ‘talk out’, Roger. There’s no peaceful solution to be had here. There’s no non-violent solution to this that could ever make you pay for what you’ve just done.” 

He glares at me, his icy blue eyes piercing through me like a furious blizzard as he pushes himself up against my chest again and raises his fists up like he’s planning to hit me. Instinctively, I duck and cover my head with my hands and wait for a savage beating anyway, but at least for this moment it doesn’t come, much to my relief.

“Don’t hit me,” I whimper, defeated already even though he hasn’t touched me.

“Don’t be fucking pathetic, Roger. What, you can be a big man when you’re holding a woman down and violating her while she’s trying to fight you off, but you can’t face another man who’s just as strong as you? You can’t face me, Roger? What kind of a man are you?” 

“It’s not...that’s not what I planned when I invited her up here,” I say, knowing my excuse doesn’t hold up at all.

“Oh, it’s not, is it? What were you planning, you disgusting, pathetic, weak little fuck? Big man you are, aren’t you, fucking with a woman who fucking hates your guts, always has, and always will? Or is it about me, huh? Is it about the fact that you know you’ve never been half the man that I am, that you know you’ve never been even half the guitarist and singer that I am? Is it some kind of fucking revenge against me that makes you want to assault my fucking partner?”

“Your partner? Really? You have a fucking wife and have the nerve to call your mistress your partner?,” I shout, now full up with anger and about to burst at the seams, unafraid of whatever could come next.

“Oh, you’re one to talk. You’ve cheated on every woman you’ve ever allowed to be close to you except for her, and you spent nearly 20 fucking years obsessing over that one woman even though you were with her best friend. You’re a fucking hypocrite, you are, for even thinking you have any room to say something like that to me.”

“Are you ever gonna actually leave Kim to be with Maisie if she’s your partner, David? Because I’d leave Anna in a second if it meant I could be with her, and that’s why I have room to fucking talk and you don’t.”

“Don’t you come to me and act like you have any moral high ground here just because you’d leave your wife to be with somebody else, and I’m not ready to take that step in my own situation. You fucking sexually assaulted a woman. Not just any woman, but my fucking woman, and I’m here to make sure you pay for it.”

“Pay for it? How are you gonna make me pay for it?”

“How the fuck do you think I’m gonna make you pay for it?,” David snarls as he bumps me with his chest and glares menacingly at me. I’ve never seen him look so angry, even when we got into our worst scuffles as young lads in a band together.

He advances on me, making me back up toward the wall to get away from him, and as soon as I try to squirm away he shoves me, and I hit the wall with a loud thud. I can feel the breath being knocked out of me. He raises his fist as I slide down to the floor, clutching my ribs, and I cover my head again, but he grabs a fistful of my hair. I shout in pain as he lifts me up without any care at all and slams his fist into my ribs, exacerbating the pain he’s already caused me. I double over in pain once again, my ribs aching with a dull, intense pain that doesn’t even compare to the last time he hit me.

“Fuck you, Roger. I don’t ever want to see you again. I don’t ever want to play in a band with you again, or for you to contact me ever again and try to put the band back together because this is the absolute last straw. I don’t want to hear that you’re contacting Maisie. I don’t even want to see you within ten fucking feet of her, do you understand me? I put up with your shit for far too long. I stood by while you made decision after decision for our band without consulting us, when you got too fucking drunk and high to perform and had to be dragged out of your room when we were touring because you fucking forced us to tour despite our protests while complaining about it endlessly...I stuck with you after you forced me to work with Syd because you were too lazy, I stuck by your side when you threw Rick out of the band simply for asking to be with his daughter who lost her mother who he hadn’t seen for more than a month or two for four years. I have let you walk all over me and my friends, and I will not do it anymore. You are cut off. There is no Pink Floyd that includes Roger Waters, and there never will be again. Stay the fuck away from us, you slithering, hissing snake. Everyone who’s ever been close to you knows exactly what you are, and that’s why you will always be alone. Don’t bother trying to say goodbye to anyone. We’ll probably check out before you even get the chance. I have half a mind to take Maisie back to Maine tonight just to get her the fuck away from you. She’s in tears in our hotel room. She was shaking on the bathroom floor when she told me . It took me fifteen minutes to roll her a joint and get her into bed so she could calm down and sleep. Is that how you treat a woman you say you love?”

“Get the fuck out of my room, asshole. Don’t you ever put your hands on me again,” I growl as I shove him away from me. He stumbles backward and catches himself before he falls on his fat ass, and I charge at him again. Before I know it, and before I can catch myself and try to keep my cool I tackle him and push him to the floor. He lands with a loud crash on the pristine white carpet and I jump on top of him and squeeze his throat with my hand with fingers that are long enough to make their way around his fleshy, girthy neck, and watch as his eyes widen and his face starts to turn red, and then purple. I take pleasure in the gurgling sounds he starts to make as I squeeze tighter and further constrict his breathing. I’m not sure if I’m trying to kill him, and that terrifies me, but I find that I can’t bring myself to stop.

He manages to grip my arm with his massive bear claw and the skin beneath his fingers starts to turn purple; he grips so hard that he’s bruising me. Finally, as I struggle against him, he pulls my hand from his throat, and he shoves me off of him. Defeated, I lie there and stare at the ceiling trying like hell to catch my breath. He stands up, brushes himself off, and stares down at me with a chilling, disturbing disdain in his eyes, and then a puddle of nasty spit hits my face as he blows it out of his mouth.

“You’re disgusting. Don’t ever bother to try and contact me again. Goodbye, Roger. You’ve fucked up the only good things you’ve ever had in your life, and you will continue to until God finally takes pity on you and lets you die.”

And with that he slams the door violently as he walks out.

I’m left lying in a pool of my own stinking sweat barely able to breathe after he leaves.

I don’t care what he says, though.

She’ll be mine someday.


	10. Roger - Cambridge, April 1974 - Roger's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maisie makes a difficult request of Roger.

_She called me yesterday just as I had finished fucking around with the bass line I composed for the song I’m writing about Syd. I was feeling pretty shitty as it was when the phone rang (hard to write a bass line I’m happy with - I’m more of a lyricist anyway), and when it rang I was prepared for some bad news of some sort, or one of the boys complaining about something they were unhappy with concerning the new album (as they always seem to do), but then I heard her dark, velvety voice on the other line and all of that nastiness, that anger...it all evaporated away. My heart skipped a beat when she said my name: ‘Roger…?’ I wanted to beg her to please continue to say it, over and over and over again until I could get the sound of it imprinted onto my brain. That way, if she never speaks my name again, I’ll always remember how it sounded that one time when she did._

_At first I thought that for sure she was calling to speak to Cora. She’s called asking after Cora before, and it makes sense to assume that Cora would be here (and she was here when Maisie happened to ring me), but one could not imagine my surprise when she asked after me and explained that she’d really like to come and talk to me today. Of course I said yes. There was never any other option but to say yes, as I’d be a real lunatic to say no. She specified that she’d like to see me alone, as well, which was rather interesting. She didn’t want Cora there, nor did she want David there. So...I made sure Cora found something to do today (perhaps go round to the shops with her sister, I think she mentioned that - I’m not entirely sure). I used the record company execs as an excuse to get her out of the house and make sure she doesn’t show up here at all this afternoon. I told her they’d be swinging by to talk about the album, and that she’d be bored by all that talk anyway, so she might as well go find herself something better to do. I didn’t think that Maisie would tell her she was coming here, but I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it. For now I’m only focusing on getting the house in order and making sure I look nice. I can’t imagine what she would want to come here without David to tell me._

_So with all of that in mind, you know my mind is swimming in a warm sea of possibilities right now, and I’ve invented some rather intriguing scenarios to fill the uncertainty with that are lighting the spark of hope I thought may have gone out._

_My favourite possibility, the fantasy I’ve been obsessively curating since we hung up the phone, is that she’s come to realise that she can’t live with the secret she’s kept from David for so many years anymore, the secret she has been trying like hell to hide from herself, but she can’t hide from herself anymore, either, try desperately as she might: she’s desperately in love with me, she thinks longingly of me as she lies awake at night knowing deep inside of her soul that she’s lying next to the wrong man, and every time she sees me it only reminds her of it. She can’t live anymore knowing that I am sleeping with someone else just as she is when the two of us have always been meant for one another, and she’s come here today to tell me and to beg me to come back to her._

_And immediately after hearing her confession, the one I’ve been waiting the better part of ten years for, I wrap her in my arms and squeeze her warm body against mine, and I whisper in her ear that I have always loved her, too, and have never wanted anything more than for her to be by my side even though I’ve never found a way to tell her. She buries her head in my chest in submission, and as my body begins to melt I find my hands instinctively reaching for her face. I cup her cheeks with both of my hands and turn her face up toward mine, stunned by the loving gleam in her eyes that I never thought I’d see when she looked at me. I can’t resist the urge to pull her toward me and lay the kiss upon her lips that I have always longed for since she left me for Syd. We stand intertwined and immersed in our passion for a few moments before I pull away, scoop her up and carry her off to my bedroom where I throw her on my bed and she waits patiently for me to ravage her. She moans out my name in a soft whisper as I lie on top of her and slide her blouse up over her chest, enjoying every inch of the small mounds that wait for me underneath it with my lips and the tips of my fingers. I find my hands roaming over her breasts, her tummy, her hips, and finally, as I slide her miniskirt down off of her, the treasure between her pale, powerful thighs._

_And yet... the entire fantasy that I’ve been enjoying for the past day is utterly destroyed by the sad, distressing fact that I’m fully aware that there’s likely some other reason for her to be here, and it likely has nothing to do with any feelings she has for me (for it’s very unlikely that she even has any...when was the last time Maisie looked in my direction?). Is David’s birthday coming up? It can’t be, for the two of them had their birthdays a few months ago._

_Whatever could it be, then? The lack of any real clue as to what she wants is driving me insane. It could be anything. She could be coming here to scream her head off at me for stressing David out, or something...she could be coming here to pester me about proposing to Cora (god knows my bloody mother has - ‘Shit or get off the bloody pot already, Roger, will you?’) … I bet that’s all it is. I bet she’s coming here to bother me about that because Cora’s probably got all weepy about it with her, what with the wedding news the birds have been blathering on about, and all.  
A cold spring downpour just started a few minutes ago and now that I think I’ve got the house clean enough for my liking I’m sitting paralysed, in wait for her, unsure and distraught, listening as it beats down in sheets upon the roof. I’m wishing as hard as I possibly can that she’d come here and heal all of the pain I feel when I watch her love David by telling me she can’t go on without my love anymore...that my love is all that she craves from this life, and is unfulfilled by every moment she spends with David that could be spent with me. The uncertainty is killing me. Wondering what it could be that she wants from me enough to come here alone, it’s filling my mind with so many fantasies and wishes that I may not ever be able to make come true. I want to cry. If she doesn’t turn up soon, I just may._

_Then a frantic knock comes on the door, and I grit my teeth as I rush toward the door...and try as I may to prevent myself from hurrying to greet her I can’t help it. I straighten my clothes and tousle my hair just a bit, hoping to avoid looking too neat. I don’t want her to think I thought about it as much as I did. I turn the knob, and when I open the door she’s there...and she’s completely soaked through the skin._

_Her hair hangs in dripping tendrils around her poor, ghastly white face, and I notice her shivering as she grasps at herself. Her purple print Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress (and I only know that’s what it is because I heard Cora shitting herself over it on the phone, so jealous that I was forced to buy her one of her own) hangs pitifully around her knees like a wet rag, although the rain has made it cling steadfastly to her curvaceous body in a way that’s so sensuous and undeniably inviting that I can’t help but in a way be grateful that she’s managed to get herself rained on. Maybe I stared at her for a moment too long, but I open the door as soon as I can regain my senses and force the hard-on I’ve started to grow beneath my trousers to stay where it is._

_“What happened? You’re soaked. Come in,” I say, holding the door for her._

_“It was so nice when I left that I thought I’d walk. Turns out that was a terrible idea. I wasn’t expecting any rain,” she muses as she steps in on the brown welcome mat in front of my door._

_“You’ve lived in England long enough; you should know it’ll rain with no warning in the spring,” I joke, and I start to walk away, but notice her standing there glued to the spot, unsure of what to do._

_That’s right - she’s probably embarrassed to step off the rug being as wet as she is. Look at how almost pathetic she looks all wet and cold like that. If I just moved in right now to pull her into my arms...to warm her up...no, Roger, don’t get yourself caught up. Not yet. I have to see what she wants first before I do that. But it’s so tempting. She looks so cold, and so helpless._

_“I don’t want to get your furniture wet,” she admits after a moment of silence, and she looks down at the floor, embarrassed. “So I guess I’ll just make this quick…”_

_“Nonsense,” I say, turning around and looking her over, and my god...even soaking wet like a . “You can borrow some of my clothes. Just bring them back tomorrow or something.”_

_“Are you sure?,” she asks, shocked._

_Her eyes light up at the idea of getting out of wet clothes, and how I wish I could only stop her before she put the new ones on…_

_“Yeah, hold on. Won’t be a moment,” I say as I rush upstairs and grab a black long sleeved t-shirt and a pair of red plaid pyjama pants for her. I get her a pair of Cora’s socks, also, a black pair that I know she won’t miss. She has so many fancy ones that she won’t notice one pair of black socks missing._

_I rush back down the stairs, approach Maisie, and hand the clothes to her. She’s already taken off her brown leather go-go boots and placed them near the door, and when she takes the pile of clothing from me she smiles at me with wide, grateful eyes. I’m paralysed … not with fear, maybe, but … I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can’t think. I can only stupidly place my arms back down at my sides and stare at her._

_“Thanks, Roger. That was really nice of you,” she says, and I bristle pleasantly at the way she speaks my name in a voice barely above a whisper._

_I stare into her wide, chocolate eyes...I take every second I’m able to soak in the way the light hits them just right so they’re shining so beautifully. I find I am unable to produce anything to say in response, so I just nod at her, but I can feel my cheeks heating up. I can feel my heart thumping inside my chest, and my palms beginning to sweat. Then I step out of her way and let her step into the bathroom to change, but even I can tell my movement was robotic. It’s only because I’m trying so hard not to follow into the bathroom behind her. After all, we’ve found ourselves here before._

_This floor, after all, is the same floor where we fucked on that fateful night in 1967 when she finally had enough of me and ran off. The bathroom that she’s currently changing in? That’s the same one where she stepped into the shower after we fucked right on this floor, and then I swallowed all of my pride and stepped in after her, trying with all my might to show her how I really felt, but finding that I’d been too late...she had already tired of me (and rightfully so). She’s naked in there now, I bet, or nearly naked, about to slip her body into my clothes. Although I suspect she’ll wash them before she gives them back I can’t help but hope that perhaps she won’t, that she’ll hand them back to me with her cocoa smell still on them so I can keep them beside me in bed every night Cora isn’t here just as I did with the clothes I let her wear that day David brought her here from Syd’s house. I kept those clothes tucked away for an entire year before I couldn’t smell her on them anymore, sleeping with them clutched against me when I could._

_The door handle turns a few moments later, freeing me from my ruminating and temptation, or so I thought...perhaps foolishly. I should have known better, that as soon as I saw her I’d be worse off than I was before she went in. But when I watch her wander out of my bathroom wearing my clothes I find myself backing up against the wall in shock. She looks perfect in them. She looks like she’s mine, like she’s been mine all along, and like that’s completely fine with her. Not only completely fine with her, she’s happy about it. She’s so happy that she’s wearing my clothes in favour of her own._

_I love the way that my trousers drag on the floor when she’s wearing them, and I love the way the sleeves of my t-shirt hang over her tiny, gentle hands. With her hair starting to dry and go all wild the way it does sometimes, it looks as if she’s just woken up, rolled out of bed, and come to join me in the kitchen for breakfast. It looks like she’s my girlfriend, wearing my clothes...sleeping in my bed. From that one glimpse I am able to construct an entire steamy, romantic, and yet completely mundane plot for she and I to share in the love story I’ve written for us in my mind._

_It takes entirely too long for me to notice that she’s giving me a puzzled, uncomfortable look, and that it likely means I’ve been staring at her. I’m embarrassed. Mortified, in fact, but I can’t help but stare._

_“You alright?,” she asks, snapping me out of it._

_“Er … yeah. My apologies. Just been a hard time, is all. I’m sure you know by now how stressful it is for us when we’ve got a lot of music to write and not a lot of time to do it in.”_

_There’s a long, weird silence that hangs in the air between the two of us, and I scramble to find something more to say before I start to give myself away. It seems like when I said that something went off inside her, and I can see her face start to fall._

_“Would you like a cup of tea? I’m sure you’d like to warm up a bit,” I offer, trying to perhaps lighten the mood._

_“That’s really nice of you, but you don’t need to trouble yourself…”_

_“Bollocks,” I say, “It’s no problem at all. I was … I was going to have some myself, anyway. I’ve been at it for a while writing music and I need a break.”_

_That’s a bold faced lie if I’ve ever told one. I only keep tea in the house for the rare occasions when I condescend to allow my mother to visit. Otherwise the teabags sit abandoned in their jar in my kitchen, destined to remain unused, for I despise tea. But she must be so cold...and since I can’t reach out and hold her to warm her the way that I desperately wish I could, this is the second best option._

_“Thanks,” she says, and I nod in response as I make my way toward the kitchen._

_The kitchen looks real different since I started going out with Cora, so I think I’ll give you an update. I never really cared to do much with it when it was just me, and I never really let Maisie do all that much with it when she was here, either, preferring to keep a minimalistic style (which is still what I would prefer - I saw nothing wrong with blank white walls and a bare hardwood floor). But Cora came into my house and saw nothing but possibilities, and caring very little to put up a fight and preferring instead to just shut her up and appease her, I let her re-do the entire kitchen. The counters are a pale, Easter egg yellow with black granite countertops. Same goes for the cabinets, and all the cabinets both on top and below inside the counters have weird, silver little triangular shaped handles on them. She replaced my cheap old oven with a newer one, a stainless steel model, and I let her have the old wooden floors done in a daring teal linoleum. She had pink wallpaper with butterflies on it put up in here, too. Personally, I hate it. I think it’s tacky, and too loud, but what’s done is done. She won’t get to design the kitchen whenever we do eventually move in together, though. I think I’ve drawn the line at teal floors and butterfly wallpaper. It’s not at all me. I sometimes wonder if she did it on purpose because she knows that._

_I pull out a brown teak dining chair for her, and she sits down while I put tea on and throw some tea bags in two saucers. I remember the one she used to like when she lived here … the white one with pink flowers that Syd left here when he used to come and stay … and so that’s the one I pull out for her. Maybe she’ll remember it, and it’ll make her smile. She certainly doesn’t seem all that happy today, that’s for sure. She sits down and folds her arms on the top of the table, staring up at the ceiling while she waits for me to join her, but then shifting her focus to the table. I notice her trailing the swirls in my teak dining table with her finger, far away and distracted as she gets lost inside them. Any illusions I had that she may have come here to confess her love to me are immediately smashed. Something’s wrong. She seems deflated. Maybe it’s only that she got rained on coming over here, but she doesn’t seem like a woman in love. There’s a tiredness in her eyes that I’m not accustomed to, and that I don’t like to see. I love to see her when she’s well-rested and happy, but that’s not the woman that’s come to me today._

_“I’ll come sit down as soon as the tea is done,” I say, breaking the silence._

_“Thanks, Roger. I really appreciate you taking the time to see me today. I know you’ve been so busy. This new album must really be taking up a tonne of your time.”_

_Is that a hint of passive aggressiveness I hear in her voice? Perhaps a bit of iciness, something she’d like to say to me that she’s electing not to? A bitterness, even. An icy, irritated bitterness._

_“It has been, but …” I stop, knowing exactly what I want to say, but unsure how it’ll come off. Fuck it. “I’ve always got time for you.”_

_“Hm,” she responds, letting her eyes roam toward the floor._

_I wish I had more to say. I wish I could tell her I meant that, and that I wasn’t just being a prat...I do always have time for her._

_The tea kettle starts to scream from the stovetop like it can’t stand to be on the burner anymore: it needs to be removed now and all of its water poured into the teacups or it will simply lose its little steel mind. It reminds me of myself a bit as I sit here next to her boiling over with so much love and so much passion that I can’t stand it. If only she’d take pity and remove me from the burner that irritates me so and heal me with her love…then maybe I too could stop screaming. Like tea, if she poured me out and let me steep for a bit I could also become something hot and comforting for her, but she may never._

_I rise from my seat and as I pour the tea I steal a glance at her from the corner of my eye. She’s still listless, folded into herself and uncomfortable with her fuzzy, primal hair shielding her face like curtains. She clearly doesn’t want to be here with me; she couldn’t make it any more obvious if she tried. The stream of steaming water finds its way into both teacups and the bags bleed out the bitter amber liquid that transforms the water into tea. Steam rolls off the surface of both teacups in a mesmerising, twirling dance, warming my hands and my face before I set hers down in front of her, and mine down in front of my chair. When I sit down I notice that she’s let her face peek out from behind the security blanket of hair she was using to hide from me, and her eyes are lit up when she sees the teacup I’ve chosen for her._

_“I remember that teacup. That’s the one I always used to drink from.” She pauses, looks at me with a barely concealed smile behind her eyes that I can’t help but feel warmed and excited and possessed by. “Did you remember?”_

_“Maybe,” I admit, looking down at the kitchen floor. “Could just be a coincidence.”_

_I show her a small smile, and our eyes meet for a moment. They lock onto one another, and I’m hypnotised by her...I never want to look away, but after I’ve stared at her too long she breaks our mutual stare and grasps her teacup with both hands, warming her palms against the outside of the cup. Her eyes wander toward the billowing steam rising from the surface, and then finally she returns her gaze to me._

_“Look...I came here today to ask you something. Something really important. A favour, I guess.”_

_“Favour, huh?,” I tease. “Let’s hear it, then. I’ll see what I can do.”_

_I notice her eyes filling with tears, and as quickly as they started to gather she wipes them away and takes her first sip of tea. Her hair falls into her face again, blocking my view of her wet, sad eyes and trembling upper lip. After another sip, she loses her battle, and tears start to stream down her cheeks._

_“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to come apart in front of you like this. I know it must be weird for you. But I just...this album that David’s doing with Syd, it’s really … it’s causing us both so much stress, Roger. I’ve never seen David like this. He’s so upset and cold all the time, and I found out how hellish these recording sessions are for him. I just want him back to normal. He’s so miserable; you wouldn’t believe it. He’d never tell you, and he’d never show you, so that’s why I’m here. I’m here on his behalf because I don’t think he should do this anymore. There’s so much bad blood between him and Syd, you know that. After everything that happened with Syd and I, and him showing up at the shows to stalk David, and … and …” Her voice, shaking and timid, trails off for a second before she continues._

_“And Syd coming to our old house and stalking...stalking me...David can’t bear it anymore. Please, Roger, could you find it in yourself to maybe finish the album for him? I know you’re really busy, you’re doing the heaviest load of the work on the new album out of all of the guys, I know that, and I understand if you say can’t handle both responsibilities. I won’t really hold it against you. I just didn’t think there was anything wrong with asking … because …”_

_My heart begins to race as Maisie’s puffy, tear-filled eyes lock onto me again … cheeks red and stained with tears, and strands of hair made wet again by them … and she seems to hold me in higher regard than she has in years._

_“Because I know that even though you put on an act, you’re a good man deep inside. And I know you and David butt heads a lot, but I think you do care about him somewhere in there, and even if you don’t … you and I have history … please just do it as a favour to me.”_

_I’m possessed by two dark temptations at this moment, two dark, greedy temptations that I feel ashamed by, especially given the compliment she just gave me that she didn’t need to:_

_The first is the desire to say absolutely not and to allow David’s suffering to continue, punishing him for taking her from me and for being better at the guitar than I am, and a better singer than I am...better looking and more well-liked than I am. I’m tempted to tell her ‘Apologies, but I just can’t handle that kind of a workload right now’, and send her on her way home so David has to continue being confronted with Syd, and indeed...all the ghosts of Syd’s presence in the band and Syd and Maisie’s relationship that he already lives with. But my desire to make David suffer is outweighed by my need to do anything I can to stop my love from crying in front of me._

_And the second, and by far darker, desire is to lean in, take her hand and bring it to my lips, and ask ‘What can you do for me, then?’, and to lead her to my bedroom...to take her in my arms and enjoy every inch of her soft, generous body. To enjoy her silky plump lips with my own and bury my hands in her hair...to eat her wet pussy until she screams and to feel the tightness of her throat, and then her pussy, around my raging erection. I’d whisper in her ear ‘I adore you’ as I collapsed on top of her in a sweaty heap, having released my load inside of her, and she’d be so overcome with passion that she’d submit to me, and we’d run off together tonight._

_But I cannot do that. If Maisie is to come to love me, I know that in the end I will feel cheated if the way she came to it is through my manipulation and blackmail._

_And I cannot say no, either._

_I cannot be the cause of her tears once again. I can’t bear it._

_“I’ll do it,” I say resolutely in a low, reluctant voice. “I understand. You don’t like to see David so stressed. And it must be a lot for you too, then...I probably should never have asked that of him. I should have thought about how you’d feel…” And I add in, just because I feel I have to … “and how David would feel. It was selfish of me. I’m sorry. I’ll pick up where David’s left off starting tomorrow. Don’t you worry yourself about it anymore.”_

_And just like that it seems the heaviest of weights has been lifted off of Maisie’s shoulders. Her presence is immediately lighter, and when she takes another sip of her tea she smiles at me from behind it, and my breath becomes laboured and short when I notice. I smile back at her, and I can feel my cheeks heating up. If only I could lower that teacup to the table and graze her cheek with my fingertips. If only I could move my chair closer to hers and tell her how I’d do anything for her._

_“Thank you. Thank you so much. Just please...don’t tell him I came here, okay? I don’t want him to know I intervened. He would be really unhappy if he knew I let on to you how hard this has been on him.”_

_“I won’t say a word,” I respond with another smile, and when she returns it I find myself looking down at the floor because I can tell I’m blushing twelve different shades of red, and I don’t want to give her even a clue that seeing her smile brightens my entire day. “You’ve got my word.”_

_“Oh, Roger, I could hug you,” she says, beaming at me._

_I want more than anything to take her up on it, to feel her body wrapped in my embrace one more time, protected from any possible threat, weak to me…_

_“Not necessary,” is what I end up saying, even though I want it so bad I can taste it...even though I’d do anything to get it. I don’t want her to know how bad I want it._

_“Just..thank you,” she whispers as she takes a last gulp of her tea. She looks down at her golden watch and her eyes widen. “Oh, I’ve been here about fifteen minutes longer than I planned. I better get going. It’s a half hour walk home, after all.”_

_“It’s still raining. Let me give you a ride. Wouldn’t want you to get soaked again after you’ve changed.”_

_“You don’t have to. You’ve already done enough. I’ll get a cab.”_

_“Let me drive you home,” I nearly beg, and I hope she can’t hear the desperation in my voice._

_“Okay. That would be nice. Thank you.”_

_We walk to my car, and I open the door for her and close it after she gets in. Her eyes follow me as I make my way toward the driver’s side door, and I hold her gaze for a second before diverting it, not wanting to give too much away._


	11. Maisie - London, August 2007 - The Bloomsbury Hotel - The Lobby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maisie meets Roger in the lobby while waiting for David to get the car. What will she do?

I never asked David to beat Roger up; he made that decision all on his own...because you know how David can get when he gets angry at another man. In fact, I guess I’d rather he hadn’t done it. That's an understatement….I explicitly asked him not to, and he did anyway, but I was too exhausted to be angry. 

I don’t know why...maybe I should be happy that he did it. I think a lot of women might be happy that he did if it were them, and on some level I guess I am. Roger had it coming to him, after all, but I guess I just wish there was a different solution other than violence. I don’t know that it was all about me, either, really...I think David has wanted to do that to Roger for a long time and for a lot of reasons, and this was just the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. It’s not like David was particularly proud of it, either. He spent a lot of time last night feeling guilty about it and asking me every few minutes if I thought he should go and apologize, but ultimately he decided not to. What Roger did was over the line, he said (and I agree), and there was no place for an apology. I agree with that, too. I wish he hadn’t done it, but now that he did, I don’t think he should apologize for it.

I’m not sure how to feel in general, I think, and that’s part of what’s making this so difficult.

Since when did Roger have any kind of feelings for me? Did I give off some kind of impression to him that I was interested in him that made him act out like that? I think I’ve always kept him at arms’ length if I acknowledged him at all. Did I say or do something at the service that gave off any vibes? What exactly could have caused him to think I’d be interested in having sex with him? And is sex truly all that he wanted? If it isn’t … why did he attack me that way? I’m so confused. I’m confused, I’m angry, and I’m maybe even a little scared. I don’t think anything like that has ever happened to me before. I’ve been lucky enough in my life to avoid becoming a statistic; I’ve never been raped or sexually assaulted beyond this one time in Detroit in the late 70s, and that didn’t get as far as it could have. And now that I mention it I’m remembering that it was Roger who beat the shit out of that guy for me and scared him off. I thought maybe he had a good heart then underneath all the layers of vitriol and narcissism, and that maybe he just had trouble showing it to people...and now I don’t think there’s a shred of goodness inside him. Either that, or he used to have some kindness and goodness in him, and it’s congealed and withered away over the years. Maybe he’s become bitter from so many years of disappointment and self-inflicted loneliness. Either way, it isn’t my problem.

Anyway … David’s gone to pack the car and bring it around, and I’m standing around waiting for him in the lobby. Amelia and Nick have just left, and Rick checked out early this morning. He knocked on the door and popped his head in to say goodbye, apparently, but I didn’t wake up when he did. I was sad to have missed him. You never know when you get to be this age when it’s the last time you’ll see somebody, and he didn’t seem completely well to me when we were all hanging out together yesterday. He was so thin and sunken in, and his coughing sort of reminded me of Syd’s when the cancer spread to his lungs. Rick was always thin, but it’s different now. He looked almost worn out, very pale, and just a little too bony. 

I didn’t say anything about it to David, though. He’s got enough on his mind, and I know how deeply he cares for Rick. I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.

The rain is beating down in violent sheets on the ground outside, and he didn’t want me to have to walk in it. He’s good like that. We were lucky to have escaped the rain yesterday, but we knew we wouldn’t escape it forever. It wouldn’t be a trip to England without a downpour, or at least a drizzle, and I think I’m kind of glad for it. Reminds me of my second home. Maybe if I step out in it for a second I’ll feel cleansed. I feel disgusting, and I feel soiled. Even after the shower I took I didn’t feel like I got his putrid stink all the way off of me. Part of me isn’t sure I’ll ever get it completely off, and that I’ll be tainted by him forever. What happened last night is the kind of thing that doesn’t wash off; it’s the kind of experience that can stay with you and can damage you forever. Well, I don’t know if I can not allow it to damage me, but I’m sure as hell going to try. If anyone is going to take me down, it isn’t gonna be pathetic, slimy, manipulative and selfish Roger Waters. 

Even though this hotel is gorgeous, including the lobby with its majestic hanging crystal chandeliers, dark brown oak French doors, fancy red sofas and exotic plants in pots of all sizes littered around the room, all I can see when I look at all of it in its ostentatious, well-lit glory is a ball of polished up shit and a place that I never want to come back to for the rest of my life. The air smells like that too-clean smell that hotels sometimes have, that smell of lemony cleaning products that used to trigger some really bad memories for me that I don’t feel bothered by anymore now that Syd and I put all of that behind us. No, now I’m going to have to be plagued by memories of Roger with his hands under my clothes, around my throat and in my hair … his body pressed against mine, giving me no space between his body and the wall, his lips desperately consuming mine … and I start to shiver at the thought of it. 

And that’s when I feel a hand gripping my shoulder, and I must have leapt 10 feet when I felt it. I let out a frightened squeak, and then I turn around, and my insides twist up with disdain when I look upon Roger, obviously hungover and tired and wearing the same black t-shirt and black jeans that he was wearing last night. He looks like he hasn’t slept a wink. His strong face is leathery, sunken, and sad, his seafoam eyes bordered by two dark purple rings. They’re red, maybe from crying. His eyes seem haunted, and his hair is in a messy, unbrushed heap on top of his head.

He looks ghastly.   
“What the fuck do you want?,” I spit at him. “Get your hand off my fucking shoulder. Right now.” 

“Please hear me out...please,” he begs softly. 

“No,” I say, and I turn my back after I notice his tear-stained cheeks. Manipulative little ratfuck. 

“Maisie...please.” 

“David told you to stay the fuck away from me, didn’t he? He’s only outside getting the car and warming it up; he’ll be back, and if he sees you here he might end up getting arrested. And if you don’t step off I might get arrested, too. You put your hands on me even after I said no and tried to push you away. You were rough with me, and I am still scared and shaken up. Please, go away. I don’t want to hear it.” 

“I can’t just let you go without apologizing.”

“Your apologies mean literally nothing. If you don’t leave I’m gonna go stand out in that rain.” 

“Don’t do that. Please. I’m sorry, Maisie. I don’t know why I did that to you. I have no idea what came over me. That’s not why I invited you to my room.” 

“Yeah, you invited me to your room to tell me I didn’t love my husband, who you never saw after 1974 and didn’t even bother with for years, but I was there when he died. You invited me to your room to be a dick to me...well, you certainly succeeded, let me tell you.” 

“That isn’t even why I invited you. I was lying about that.” 

“Oh yeah? Then why did you say all that dumb shit?”

He pauses, and puts his hands in his pockets, and then his eyes shift towards the floor.

“I don’t know. It just came out of my mouth. What I wanted…”

“I don’t give a fuck what you wanted. Goodbye.” 

“Please…,” he goes on begging like a pitiful little man begging for a scrap of food. 

“No. Fuck off. I’ve never hated you more than I do now,” I hiss at him as I turn my back again and start to walk toward the door. I force my way through both doors and let them slam behind me, leaving Roger standing dumbfounded and heartbroken next to one of the sofas. I look back at him one more time, shooting a deadly glare his way, and step outside under the fancy magenta awning.

I lean against the railing and stare up at the ceiling, listening intently to the sound of raindrops beating down on it. The sound of the rain hypnotizes and calms me; I feel a wave of tranquility washing over me as I close my eyes and focus on the sound. The smell of fresh rain is cleansing, just as I hoped it would be. Even though I’m out in the open, and he could chase after me at any time, I feel safe surrounded by the steady rain, which calmed since I noticed it before. 

Luckily, Roger does not follow me outside. If I could see him anymore I’d look back and give him another glare, but I don’t think he’s even worth the small amount of effort that would take. He is shit on the bottom of my shoe. He has always been shit on the bottom of my shoe. He always will be shit on the bottom of my shoe, and I don’t think I’ll ever have to worry about him again. 

David was clear: he isn’t to contact either of us, and he is never to get near either of us. He is firmly banned from ever bothering us with his presence again, and I am pretty sure David regrets ever putting this reunion together in the first place. 

I notice our dark blue rental Acura rolling up to the curb, and without a second thought I pick up my purse and wheel my suitcase behind me as I break into a sprint toward the car. As the rain beats down upon me, wetting my hair and my skin and my clothes, I toss my suitcase into the backseat next to David’s and climb into the passenger’s seat. I look over at him, and our eyes meet, and he smiles at me with a comforting warmth that I truly needed. He leans over, takes my cheek in his palm, and lays a gentle kiss upon my lips.

“How you doing?,” he asks before he pulls away from my face, and his lips find my cheek next. I quiver as I feel the way they gently brush against my skin.

It’s a last minute decision not to tell him about the confrontation I had with Roger. I disengaged, I walked away, and nothing terrible came of it, and I do not want David getting himself in trouble. Maybe once we get home I’ll tell him about it, but for now I need the peace that shutting up about it will bring us. We’ve been through enough.

“I’m alright. Still a little shaken up, but I’ll be okay. Really,” I reassure him as I squeeze his hand.

“Good. Let’s get out of here. It was a little busier than I thought it would be, and took the valet a longer time than I thought it might to get the car. There’ll be a line behind us soon, and we wouldn’t want to get all the passive aggressive Brits bent out of shape,” he jokes .

“Can’t wait to get back to Maine,” I muse as he pulls away.

“I’ll be back with you in a few weeks,” he replies. “I’ve got to go home and see the kids and my grandkids.” 

“I know, babe. I knew going into this you were gonna have to do that, and I don’t hold it against you. I’m not the wife; I have no right to demand your time. I’ll stop by the house once a week and check on it, and in the meantime I’ll just stay with the girls.” 

“You’re never demanding my time,” he says quietly as he looks over at me and smiles. “I’d spend every waking moment with you if I could.”

And it’s then that all the shame, and the pain, is washed away from me now. I didn’t need the rain to cleanse me.


End file.
